This blog was started as a way for us to show a lot of positive things — our health, our happiness, our joys, getting out in the world enjoying nature and sitting down to a good meal. This is the first in a (hopefully very short line) of posts that we will name “Splorin’tine” (thanks to our daughter Carrie for coming up with that name). This week’s entry was supposed to be us traveling to Southern Wisconsin to finish up a couple of parks. Unfortunately this week we also found out our daughter was not going be returning to Marquette University after Spring Break. Instead, we used this weekend’s SplorinSaturday to make our way to Milwaukee so that she could pick up books she would need to use at home for at least several weeks while this whole corona virus thing keeps us away from our “normal” life.
Seeing as how we were on our way to Milwaukee, our daughter and her fiance, Michael, were guest Splorers’ with us today. The plan for today (formulated at the last minute) was to take us to three parks: Roche-a-Cri State Park, Natural Bridge State Park, and Tower Hill State Park. Even though three state parks seems like a lot, these three were chosen because they were relatively small (in terms of length of hiking trails) and were in a line on our way to Milwaukee. Since they are shorter, we were spending the night after the last park in Milwaukee, and to accomodate our guests who were not excited about leaving at our “usual” 6 am or earlier time, we left a little later (7:19AM to be exact). This meant that the Y106.5 Saturday Morning Polka Party was already well underway by the time we got it tuned in on Tammy’s phone.
Our first stop of the day would be at Bucks and Berries Family Restaurant in Babcock, WI. This was a very nice little restaurant. It was still very early in the “corona virus times” and restaurants were still allowed to be open, toilet paper was in short supply and hand sanitizer ruled the day. We didn’t arrive until 9AM, so either we were too late for the old gentleman’s coffee klatsch or this was the first restaurant that did not have one.
The four of us piled into a booth and quickly found our favorites on the menu. Mike and Tammy were old and boring with their omelettes and they pined over the french toast, eggs, toast and other things that Michael and Carrie were able to order. Breakfast was finished in short order and we were off to our first park of the day.
Typically when we go Splorin’ we are in one of Mike’s rental cars for work and we are used to paying the non-resident price for a daily pass. This time we were in our own van, and with all the corona virus stuff it may be a while before Mike has a rental again, so we splurged for the annual sticker for our van. (insert forshadowing music…) But since Roche-a-Cri’s main park offices are closed during the winter, we had to do self-registration to get our sticker. We completed the paperwork and stuffed it in the slot and were off down the trail for about 6 miles or so of hiking, including climbing the steps to the top of the rock formations (or so we thought — dramatic foreshadowing music playing). The plan was to do a big loop on the acorn trail and work our way back to climb the stairs to the observation decks. However as we made our way into the woods we very quickly noticed that there was a LOT of water all around the trail. We encountered a place where water was running across the trail, but just a couple of inches deep. So some quick footwork and movement on the side of the trail, while trying not to slip on the icy surface, and we were around it and barely wet. No big deal!! Unfortunately 20 yards later around a corner in the trail the water was almost a foot deep and running across the trail for as far as we could see.
We had no choice but to turn around and go back. Even if we made it through this section water there was no guarantee that there would not be many other similar places on the trails. So, we regretfully made our way back toward the car. There was a small trail, the Turkey Vulture Trail, off the side of the main trail. The original plan had us hiking that if we were not too tired after the other trails, but now it became a necessity or we going to have to abandon this park. It was a nice little loop on top of a hill from the overflowing stream, so at least it was not wet. We made our way back to the van and took a few pictures just so the time wasn’t a complete waste.
Right before we got in Mike heard the unmistakable call of Sandhill Cranes. Looking around we could not spot them though (on the ground) and the cloud cover was low enough that they were most likely flying overhead and just above the cloud level. Oh well, maybe later…we will come back to this park. While we will count this off as having officially “been here” we do not consider that we saw enough to be satisfied there isn’t a TON more that we can see. We have heard there is a neat tower to climb – when it is open.
Off down the road we went to our next destination — Natural Bridge State Park. This is a relatively small park with only a couple of trails, but promises the “natural bridge” sandstone formation as it’s centerpiece. We pulled into the parking lot and Mike was immediately not happy — there were about 20 other cars in the lot. Mike likes to be alone in the parks and not see many other people on the trails — something that we have found to be getting more and more difficult.
We decided to take the trail that would lead us to the natural bridge first and leave the decision to go on the longer trail until later in the hike. Leaving the parking lot we immediately started up hill. We found ourselves going up some typical “CCC state park steps”:
These were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. We could see this was leading us up through the rocks to a nice little opening. What we didn’t know was that this was, in the first 10 minutes of the hike was:
The “natural bridge”. It was quite the spectacular view and an amazing grand piece of nature. It is strange to think of what had to have happened for this formation to be made. Mother nature can be quite destructive when she wants to be. Luckily there are times that she leaves behind beautiful places like this in her wake.
Carrie and Michael did some climbing on the lower rocks and were pretending to be explorers make some exciting discovery (we know they were just pointing up in the sky…):
After this we were off down the trail. The map was a little “generic” so Mike was having a little bit of a hard time reading it. He knew he wanted to take us to the far back corner of the park where the “Indian Moccasin Nature Trail” trail was, but after climbing up some more fairly steep trails we came to a sign that said “Trail Ends Here”. Huh, that does not show on the map. There was quite the expansive view of the valley from behind the railing.
Mike determined that this must be a trail that used to go all the way through and they only recently cut part of it off. The “Trail Ends Here” sign was by the fence — Mike found where the trail used to go off the end of the fence and figured it would still be OK for us to take — many others has because it was still pretty worn through the grass. We quickly found out why it was no longer in mainstream use — you can crawl down (or up in the other direction) some fairly steep sandstone washouts. Previously there were steps and railings, but they had been removed. We took our time and thankfully going down was much easier than it would have been going up.
We eventually made it down to the road where the Whitetail Trail crosses a big cornfield and into the woods on the South side of the road. While on the edge of the corn field, we had quite an amazing view down the road into town where an iconic little white church stood.
We made our way across the corn field — the second have of the field being significantly up hill. As we made our way into the woods it was clear that the hill continued well further than just the edge. We kept climbing and climbing and eventually made it to the top (and the back side of the park) where we could see some hunting blinds that had been built just over the boundary from the park. We began to make our way back down the hill and came across someone who was obviously on a very leisurely hike to take pictures. We overtook him and never saw him again. Back out of the woods and across the corn field and across the road. A quick little trail and we were back the the parking lot. Ready to head on to our third, and last, park of the day!!!
Tower Hill State Park is another park that is closed in the winter, but you can park and walk in and explore. That is what we did. While Mike and Tam were trying to work the kinks out of their backs, legs and feet, it didn’t take long for Carrie and Michael to begin their shenanigans of climbing over everything.
Once again, we were off down the trail. Tower Hill is a historic site that contains a former shot tower where molten lead was turned into shot for rifles. The first trail we took took us up hill to the bottom of the tower. We couldn’t get to the top from there so we ended up following the steps down to the backwaters of the Wisconsin River. The steps down the hill were quite steep.
Once at the bottom you could see the cliff face that made up the tower. There was a huge tunnel dug into the limestone cliff that was used to collect the shot that fell from the tower and it was hauled out in rail cars. The face of the cliff is pockmarked with holes that birds use to build their nests in.
Quite the sight!! We continued to hike along the shore of the water to connect to the trail that would lead us up to the very top where the tower was. There was an interpretive center at the top that claimed it would explain the entire history of the site….but still being “winter” it was closed. We still ambled around it and took some pictures.
From here, we made our way back to the van and we were done with hiking for the day. It was time to take off for #SupperClubSaturday. We decided on a place in Madison that Mike and Tammy had planned on taking their bonus daughter Angela last time we were in the area (but we couldn’t because it was raining/snowing that day 😦 ). We found our way to Kavanaugh’s Esquire Club. It was supposed to open at 4PM and we arrived about 4:20. The lot was completely empty — it sure looked like they were closed. But, we saw the sign saying they were open we were just really early for dinner (like usual on our Splorin’ Saturdays).
A delicious meal was had by all except Carrie. She had fried chicken and one of the pieces was way under-cooked (the others were done just fine). She sent it back but by the time it came back we were all finished with the rest of our food, so she just got it to go. We were then off to Milwaukee to get her stuff our of her apartment and to the hotel where we were spending the night.
Wow — what a day. We were all exhausted by the time we made it to the hotel.
Splorin' Saturday 