Sometimes weather predictions are right, sometimes wrong, but you always have to listen to them…just in case. Splorin’ this week was either going to far northern Wisconsin or a little closer to home in central Wisconsin. Snow was expected and winter weather advisories posted for snow starting mid to late afternoon, so we opted for the closer to home option, and as you will see in the end it worked out pretty darn good!
Unfortunately (fortunately?) we have gotten to the point in our Splorin’ adventures where we end up heading towards the same locations, so it is getting difficult to find the little “mom and pop” style breakfast restaurants we like so much that we have not already visited! Consequently, we find ourselves ending up going a little out of the way to find a new place. We stopped for breakfast at Superior Family Restaurant/ Dino’s in Tomah, WI. This was a very cute little restaurant with very bright lights. We arrived to find that there were no older gentlemen coffee klatches in progress. :-(. In fact only one other couple was in the restaurant. We had our usual breakfast; Tammy tried to get a side salad, but no luck here. While no coffee klatch, we did have an older couple come and be seated a couple tables away from us that had some pretty unique conversations. They were just about out of earshot, but Mike overheard discussions of “life on other planets” (apparently people are too stupid to think there are not aliens out there) and about people around town who have “had the virus”. Not what we’re typically looking for our eavesdropping, but we take what we can get. Towards the end of our meal we were very happy to see a small older gentlemen’s coffee klatch forming on the other side of the restaurant. By the time we left they were a full four older gentlemen strong!
We were then off to our first destination of the day — Roche-a-Cri State Park. We arrived right on time at 9:00AM. The temperature was a nice balmy 0 degrees Fahrenheit! (-8 degree windchill) We were ready. One thing that we have learned getting out and Splorin’ in the winter is how to dress to stay warm. So many people think you need big bulky jackets, but in reality it is all about layers. Not just any layers, the lower layers to your body need to be able to breath so you don’t trap perspiration and outer layers that stop the wind from getting through. Nice warm boots and good socks are another must have — Tammy still needs to work on hers. Tammy is also very happy to have her electric hand warmers and heated scarf on days like today. Once again our crampons were on our boots, our boots were on our feet and we were ready to charge down the trail. We got out of the car and found a very large sheet of glare ice right at the beginning of the trail — it was strange walking across it with our crampons. You expect walking on ice to be slippery, but thanks to those spikes you don’t slip even a fraction of an inch, you just, well…walk right across. Cool!!!
Last time we stopped at this park, back in March of 2020, at the beginning of the Fundemic, we had our daughter, Carrie and her fiancĆ©, Michael along with us. We didn’t get too far from the car! This is a park where the main entrance is closed in the winter and you have to park in a remote lot on the south side of the park — and the creek was totally flooded. This time with temps around zero, we knew the creek would not stop us! The plan for this park was to do about 4 – 5 miles on the Acorn Trail (the main trail that loops the park) and then head out. The stairs to the top of the mound and the trail/viewing platform for the Native American petroglyphs are still closed due to the Fundemic, so we would have to limit ourselves to just hiking today. (When we got home Mike booked us a camping site here for the middle of July, so we’re hoping those will be open then.) We quickly bypassed the spot were we had to stop last time to find ourselves on a little bridge crossing the (not flooded) creek. It was a little eerie walking across the bridge. As you can imagine these parks do not get a lot of traffic in the winter (unless there is skiing available) so this bridge probably had not been crossed in a couple days. Walking on it immediately all the ice that had built up from the sun melting and then refreezing at night started to crack, but the bridge was sturdy.
Once crossing the creek we were out into the main part of the trail. One thing we found is that much like walking on a fallen leave strewn trail in Fall, walking with crampons on “crunchy” frozen/thawed/refrozen snow is VERY loud. We knew we would most like not be seeing any wildlife this morning as they could hear us coming from at least 2 miles away. It was a really beautiful day for a walk in the woods.
As we hiked we did warm up. The nice thing about winter hiking is that while it is usually cold to start out, once you get going you do stay pretty warm (unless it is windy, then all bets are off). Our faces were a little chilly as we weren’t wearing anything to cover them. The trails here are pretty easy — no elevation changes, nice wide two track trails were you can easily walk side-by-side. There were a lot of spots where we did go single file but that was purely out of ease of walking from the snow being more packed down in one track over the other.
When we were almost back to the car we took the little Turkey Vulture Trail loop. It says it is 0.9 miles, but it sure seemed a lot shorter than that. Right before the end of this loop we came upon a very large pine tree where all the snow was melted underneath it from the sun. We surprised a bevy (yes that is the proper term) of mourning doves that were soaking in the sun underneath it. About 20 flew out and then as we drew closer another 20 or so came out. Wow — crazy to see that many mourning doves in one place. As we finished this loop and started back to the car Tammy was disappointed that we did not hike further as she thought she was not going to reach her 99 walks goal for the month today (insert deep resonant foreshadowing music), so we decided to do the Turkey Vulture Trail Loop again going the opposite direction and this time we were going to measure how long it was. Turns out the 0.9 miles is completely inaccurate, it is more like 0.4 miles. We still don’t know where they are hiding that extra half of a mile, but maybe when we return in the summer we will find it. Unfortunately Roche-a-Cri is just not big enough to satisfy our needs for a day of hiking, so we hopped in the van and headed down the road for our second stop of the day.
We arrived at Lake Dexter County Park and found the plowed parking lot and enjoyed our little happy hour (bloody marys, cheese, sausage) this time staying in the warm car, and psyched ourselves up for the next hike of the day. This is a very nice park right on, yep you guessed it, Lake Dexter (which is an impoundment of the Yellow River that flows on down to Buckhorn State Park). Mike found this through his favorite Splorin’ App – All Trails. There were three trails that all shared a common loop — we opted for the longer Blue Trail (5.25 miles) because we like our miles! Since the park is closed in the winter we didn’t get to park right at the trailhead and had to walk a bit to get there. We walked passed the beach where Mike wanted to go for a swim, (it had warmed up to about 10 degrees by then) but unfortunately we saw this sign:
So, I guess no swimming. Mike has a way to jinxing certain things — which is why you often hear him (and really everyone in our family) saying “knock on wood”. As we walked down the trail to reach the trailhead it was a nice wide trail that had been packed down by lots of ice fishermen and apparently a couple of snowmobiles, so the walking was pretty easy. Mike said “wow, these trails are in good shape and easy to walk on, I hope the whole trail is like this”. Yep, that was the end of the quote – he did not finish it with “knock on wood”. So, you guessed it, the trail was NOTHING like this nice little packed down segment. The trail was wide — again it was a two track trail. The trail was fairly level — no big hills, just a couple of slight inclines and descents. But, the trail was not heavily used so there was about 2-3 inches of very crunchy snow that was frozen just enough that sometimes you would stay on top of it, sometimes you would break through and sometimes you would hit someone else’s foot step and would twist your ankle a little because of the way it froze.
Don’t get us wrong — it was a beautiful hike, just a little difficult on the legs and feet. Mike had promised the last portion of the hike would be the “prettier” portion as we would be hiking along the Yellow River and Dexter Lake. When we finally got there it was pretty, but all four of our legs and feet were done with the day so it was a little more difficult to enjoy. As we made our way along the river we noted the nice houses on the opposite side and remarked how it would be nice to live right along that stretch of the river. We saw lots of kayaks and docks and the frozen river was filled with snowmobile tracks. As we made our way up a small incline we hear dogs barking at one of these houses across the river. We could see them in their yard and then we heard their owner yelling for them to “come here”. We don’t know if the dogs were deaf, but they most certainly were not listening. They made there way along the bank of the river, then carefully climbed down through some brush and out onto the river — and headed straight for us. We were about a quarter of a mile away from them, so it surprised us that they would come all that way just to say “Hi”, but they did. We watched them make it across the river, knew they were carefully climbing the bank on our side of the river, then they were charging through the woods towards us. They weren’t growling or barking meanly, so we hoped they were just looking for a little adventure — and thankfully they were. They came right up to us and ran circles around us, then darted off into the woods all around us. Meanwhile their owner stood on the opposite bank still calling for them. We thought maybe this happened a lot and they would head back home having checked us out and deemed us worthy of being allow to hike on the trail across from their homestead, but no, they just kept following along with us. So we stopped. The owner made her way across the river and finally got the dogs to go back home. We apologized (even though we did nothing wrong) and the owner just said “one of the kids let the dogs out”, no apology to us…oh well. We were just glad they were friendly.
The hike ended up taking a little bit longer than Mike had anticipated. He usually plans for us to have 15 – 30 minutes time to get ready to go for #supperclubsaturday, but this time we literally had 1 minute. Oh well, we got changed and Mike contacted the supper club we were going to and said we might be a little late and we were ready to go — albeit both very tired and we knew, soon to be sore. Mike decided that, from now on, he would adjust his planning methodology so that we have the longer harder hike earlier in the day so that the afternoon is not so draining.
We mentioned snow was in the forecast — so we were doing this Splorin’ a little differently — rather than going doing #supperclubsaturday somewhere near our last hiking location and then driving home, we were driving home then doing a more local supper club. The snow was supposed to start mid-afternoon, so we thought we could beat it back home and if it started snowing while we were enjoying our #supperclubsaturday at least we would only have a very short drive home afterward. Our destination was Connell’s Club 12 in Fall Creek, WI. We have been to this supper club a couple of times and always have been happy. In fact, this is the supper club where we originated the whole idea of #supperclubsaturday!
That was long before Mike’s open heart surgery and the birth of #SplorinSaturday as a way to get out and get exercise, so this holds a special place in our hearts. We have never been disappointed here and that still continues. There was only one table occupied when we arrived, so we thought this would be another slow night for the supper club, but we were wrong. It got quite busy — but the tables were spaced out (probably about half of them were gone since the last time we were there) and there were reminders everywhere to stay socially distant. We were happy to see them a little busy as we hate to see all the restaurants that have had to close their doors due to lack of business.
When we mentioned to our waitress that we had spent the entire day outside, she asked why. Tammy explained our hiking, etc., to her and she told us how her mom has a bucket list item to hike the entire Ice Age Trail. So we talked a little about cold weather hiking and how to stay warm. We were excited to partake in the veggie and cheese portion of the relish tray, had our new favorite appetizer, calamari, and our usual fare for dinner — Prime Rib for Mike and steak and scallops for Tammy. Due to eating low carb, we didn’t even think of touching the bread basket she brought out…until we heard the waitress next to us drop one off her table and say they were popovers — what?!?!? Popovers are mostly egg and delicious – and don’t seem to spike Mike’s blood sugar at all! We open our bread basket to find two popovers! YUM!!!! (We may have even splurged just a little and had a taste of the cinnamon sugar butter that came with them.) All in all a delicious meal — we will most definitely be back to this supper club again in the future.
We then were off to head home — and the best part? It was an 18 minute drive home from the supper club! The only “scary” thing about the drive was that we passed 1 police car and 3 fire trucks heading the other way. š¦ Never heard any more about that, (and the snow didn’t start til we were tucked in to bed) but all-in-all for us it was yet another OUTSTANDING #SplorinSaturday!!!!!
Splorin' Saturday 