Huffin’ and Puffin’ on the Great Sauk Trail (3/6/2021)

“Pre-Spring” continues in Wisconsin and so does our loss of appetite for mud and snow. But Mike’s appetite for Prime Rib helped with the planning for this Saturday. It is the first Saturday of the month and any real Prime Rib fan knows that means “All You Can Eat” Prime Rib at Arthur’s Supper Club in Spring Green, WI. We did #SupperClubSaturday there once before and Mike could not stop talking about how good it was, so…..we’re heading back. Searching for paved trails around Spring Green, Mike came across the Great Sauk State Trail in Sauk Prairie, WI. This was a trail that we never knew existed. Even more interesting is that the northern end of the trail was in the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area — another place we never knew existed even though we have driven past it many, many times. This sounds like a #SplorinSaturday adventure in the making!!! Researching the trail we found it is about 10 miles long and stretches from right in downtown in Sauk Prairie all the way out almost to Devil’s Lake State Park. The only problem with the trail is that it is not plowed in the winter (or pre-spring). The weather the whole week before we were going was very warm with temperatures in the mid-40s — surely that meant the snow would be melted, right? Mike reached out to a “Friends of the Great Sauk Trail” Facebook group to get some more information on where to park, etc. He received a couple of replies including one on Friday afternoon where one of the members drove out to see what the end of the trail looked like where we were starting — they said the trail was partially snow-covered, but that we could get to where we wanted to start — Splorin’ is on!!!

The plan was to do about 18 miles of walking (uooing the 18 mile total we did last week) broken into two parts from the far northern end of the trail to downtown Sauk Prairie, stopping somewhere to have our happy hour and some appetizers, and then walk all the way back out to our van. Averaging 3 miles per hour would mean a 3 hour trip down and back, with 45 minutes to an hour for our break — this was going to be a LONG day on our feet. And in order to get that long day in, it meant leaving early…as in 5:20AM early. The plan was to stop at Bender’s Family Restaurant in Elroy, WI. We tried stopping here last fall but they were closed. We are sure glad we came back! The food was amazing but the service and the cuteness of the owner pushed this restaurant way up on our list of favorite breakfast places. The motto of the restaurant appears to be “Because Nice Matters” — and there “nice” was plentiful. The only thing we were really missing there was a nice coffee klatch. But given that we got there just minutes after they opened, it was understandable that the older gentleman of the area were waiting to arrive.

Just like the Great Sauk State Trail itself, the roads in the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area are not plowed in winter, furthermore it is an old ammunitions factory ( Badger Ammunition Plant, the largest ammunition factory in the world during World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars) that was donated to Wisconsin and various other organizations where the roads have not been improved….at all….since the 1960s/70s. So the pavement is falling apart, there are large pot holes and in general you cannot drive more than 20mph on the roads. The 5 miles we had to drive to our parking spot took us about 20 to 25 minutes, but we made it. Before getting to where we were parking we crossed over the trail once. We didn’t know if the snow would be melted on the trail and we could wear our shoes or if there would still be snow and we would have to wear boots. The one crossing told us all we needed to know– boots would be in order; there was still lots of snow on the trail. We began at Rescue Point 5S. A little unnerving that it was labeled as “rescue point” but we’re brave, intrepid explorers, we don’t scare easily (unless there is a sheer cliff or bear, or river crossing on rocks nearby).

Down the trail we went. It was pretty easy walking for the first 1.5 miles. We passed by a nice Ho Chunk Nation mural that was attached to some solid concrete remnants from an ammunition plant built or mechanism of some kind. The trail was mostly bare with little sections of snow here and there. Mike (foolishly) commented that he thought he would wear his shoes on the way back if the rest of the trail remained like this. (They were packed in the backpack)

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But as our luck always has it….

That escalated quickly!!!!! The next mile was about 6 to 8 inches of snow that someone, with presumably a 4×4, drove through. At first we thought those nice tire tracks would be easy to walk in, but we quickly found out the bottom of the tracks were pretty darn icy. Thankfully it froze over night and the snow was still fairly solid so we could walk on top of it without falling through for the most part. At the next intersection with a road, the tire tracks went a way and the snow began to get a little more soft as the temperature kept rising. So the next 1.5 miles was pretty challenging and quite the workout. Walking through 6 inches of sloppy snow is no fun. After that stretch, we came to a blessedly clear section for another mile.

The rest of the way to downtown Sauk City was pretty snow covered but, as Mike correctly suspected, as we got closer to town the trail became more heavily used and thus the snow was pretty packed down making it much easier to walk on. It was a very pretty walk along the Wisconsin River; we didn’t see any eagles but every winter they block off a portion of the trail because the Bald Eagles roost in the trees there while they fish below the dam. We were definitely getting tired as we approached downtown. The plan had us spending 45 minutes at our “happy hour”, but given the extra time it took us to get there due to snowy trail conditions. and likely the extra time to get back, we really only had about 30 minutes to spare.

We arrived at the Vintage Brewing Company in Sauk Prairie excited to finally get the chance to sit down and rest our weary feet. As luck would have it, again, we were told it would be 10-15 minutes for a table. We looked at the bar and there were seats and tables available and were told these were first come, first served…PERFECT!! We went and sat down and our feet sighed with relief (ok, maybe our feet didn’t, but we sure did). We had some cheese curds and “Rip Rip Chicken” which really just turned out to be boneless chicken wings made out of chicken thighs. Both were VERY good and were accompanied by a bloody mary of course (two for Mike)! Our short respite soon came to an end though and our feet began screaming at us to sit back down — but, we don’t respond well to being screamed at, so we kept going. We knew what we were in for and wanted to get to it.

The first 4 miles were a piece of cake, but we knew the next 3 were going to be difficult. Turns out the section that was pretty sloppy on the way down had melted a little bit more and we were able to make our way through it a little easier than on the way down — we could walk from patch to patch of clear space and the non-clear spaces were not so deep this time. We were focused on what it would be like when we got to the “tire track” section. We knew there would be no way we could walk on top of the snow as we did on the way down and we hoped the tire tracks were no longer icy on the bottom. We were so focused on looking ahead to that section, we completely missed a runner coming up behind us and he nearly gave us both heart attacks when he passed us! Unreal, here we were complaining about the conditions on the trail walking, and he was running on them! Wow! When we got to the tire track section we were correct about not being able to walk on top of the snow and thankfully were also right that the ice was gone and the tire tracks were just a little bit wider than they were on the way down. Better but still kind of “balance beam” walking in the tracks –but certainly doable if a bit awkward at times!! When we got to the end of the tire track section we noticed the stark difference of the trail being in a wooded area vs. being in a wide open area. You can see immediately across the road the trail is almost completely clear.

No matter, we were about a mile away from being done and our feet were rejoicing!! We made it back to the van with about 10 minutes time to get changed and ready for #SupperClubSaturday.

On the way to Arthur’s we saw about 764 deer (okay maybe less than one hundred, but there were a LOT!!!). Thankfully all were well away from the roadway. We also saw several Sandhill Cranes — Mike has converted Tammy into a Sandhill Crane fan — YAY!!! We made it to Arthur’s with enough time to stop for gas and purchase some of Mike’s “little blue pills” (no, not those – Naproxen Sodium, aka Aleve). The all you can eat prime rib was just as fabulous as Mike remembered it, however not being able to have the salad bar was a bit of a let down (but understandable). We will definitely be back sometime in the future (and most definitely on the first Saturday of the month).

Can’t wait for next week!!!! (insert eerie foreshadowing music…..)