Splorin' Saturday is about slowin' down while speedin' up, takin' it easy while gettin' out an exercisin', eatin' well while still enjoyin' eatin', usin' more apostrophes and fewer g's, and most importantly spendin' time with each other in the great state of Wisconsin!!
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 fiancé, 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. 😦 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!!!!!
Last week we went back to a tried and true location, this week we wanted to ‘splore somewhere new. Mike pulled out the trusty All Trails app and yet again found another little gem. Central Wisconsin is not having a great snow-producing winter; we are kind of stuck trying to figure out if we are going to be hiking or snowshoeing And many of the great trails that we like to hike are groomed in the winter for cross country skiing. We do not ski — at least not yet. As it is a huge no-no to hike on groomed trails, we like to avoid them like the plague lest we be lumped in with the “post holers” who ruin the groomed trails for the skiers and fat tire bikers. There is just enough snow for the trails to be groomed for skiers who have “rock skis” (didn’t know that was a thing, but “rock skis” are usually old, not so good skis, you use in early and late season skiing where you might hit rocks on the trails where there are thin patches of snow). Mike stumbled across Big Eau Pleine County Park in Mosinee, WI and saw that they did not have groomed trails there. As we might make it a habit to do, he called Marathon Country Parks Dept to inquire about the park and find out for sure. So, we got up early, pointed our van towards the East and took off for another Splorin’ Saturday.
We hit the road right at 6:58AM so we were able to tune in and stream Don Wayerski and his Saturday Morning Polka Party through the car speakers. However, once we got out in the hinterlands of Wisconsin we started losing internet connections and the polkas would come and go. Mike realized that we were getting closer to Plover, WI (home of WYTE 106.5) and just flipped us over to listening to the polkas “old-school” over-the-air radio. We were headed to Marshfield, WI for breakfast at the Sunrise Restaurant and Bar. Mike picked this one because we’re right in the middle of this whole COVID fun and their reviews mentioned how they were taking it seriously and taking precautions. We arrived and were immediately greeted by not one Saturday morning older gentlemen’s coffee klatch, but two of them!! This was going to be a good day!! We had a very enjoyable breakfast, but didn’t really get a chance to eavesdrop on the topics du jour from the coffee klatchers. That’s OK though, even though we’ve been together for over 35 years we can still find things to talk about amongst ourselves. 😉
Mike always has a plan in place before we arrive for hiking, and today was no different. What was a little different was that we did not know how much of the park was going to be open for driving. Mike had two hikes planned, but only if we could drive to the far southern end of the park. So, when we arrived we drove all the way through the park (which is HUGE by the way — about 2 miles long) to the boat ramp. It was plowed the whole way….BUT…the parking lot was full at the boat ramp with tons of ice fisherman! No worries though there was an overflow lot that we would be able to park in. We made our way back to the parking lot by the trailhead that had only one car in it when we first went past it, only to find about 8 cars there now with tons of fat tire bikers readying their gear for a ride. Mike knew there were bike trails here and we were very thankful, with a couple of small exceptions, the biking and hiking trails are kept completely separate. So we did not have to worry about ruining their trails and we also did not have to worry about getting run over!!
Last week we added our new crampons to our gear and they were securely attached to our boots once again — while we knew we would not have a lot of hills to climb this week like at Rib Mountain, but the extra traction on the trails is way worth it. We got ready and headed off toward the trail. If we could find it….it has to be there somewhere, right? We finally found the trail and we were off! The trail was very nice — it was more of a rustic dirt road (albeit a snow covered dirt road), so not a primitive trail by any stretch, and it was pretty easy to walk.
The snow was somewhat fresh and not too difficult to walk through, but we really liked the couple of times where there were tire tracks that we could walk on and not have to concentrate on lifting our boots higher out of the snow. About a mile down the trail we saw our first “wildlife” — about 6 or 8 deer running about 100 yards ahead of us. There was no way to really be quiet on the these trails with our crampons and snow, so they probably heard us coming all the way from the van. That’s OK, we saw them and that’s really all that counts.
We made our way along the trail and finally arrived near the shore of Big Eau Pleine Reservoir. This lake is a huge impoundment and it must be breathtakingly beautiful in summer, because it certainly was in the middle of winter. The beauty was even more hauntingly made by the fog that had settled over central Wisconsin for so long now — it would cover the other side of the lake for a while and then seemingly lift into nowhere. We made our way down to the shore and took a couple of our signature selfies and admired the cattails that lined the shores.
About the halfway point of our first hike we had to cross over the main park road. We got there just as the peloton of fat tire bikers got there and we followed them right out. We were concerned that we might have to share quite a bit of the trail with them but once we crossed the road we saw their trail curved off differently than ours. Whew. We made our way back up the other side of the peninsula and finally made our way back to the van just as Tammy’s feet were about to give out. She has been having a heck of time finding good hiking boots for winter, so sometimes hiking can be a literal pain for her. But, she never complains (at least not above the level of a grunt here and there).
It was now time for our favorite new part of Splorin’ Saturday – happy hour. Ever since Mike surprised Tammy with bloody marys, cheese and sausage in Governor Knowles at the end of last year, it has quickly become a staple. The weather was nice (low 20s) and we were nice and warm from the first 4 miles of the day. We decided to head to the southern end of the park and take our happy hour to a picnic table overlooking the lake and all the fisherman.
Once we got there, we couldn’t find a picnic table that was not covered in a snow along the shore, so we grudgingly decided to sit at one under a shelter. We sat down and started in on the happy hour. After maybe a whole 5 minutes there we remembered what happens after you stop hiking — your body starts to cool down; the light breeze that was cooling while walk is downright cold and trying to eat cheese and sausage with gloves on is not as easy or as fun as it might sound.
So, we packed everything up and headed back to the parking lot and the comfort and draft less van to finish happy hour.
The second hike of the day was around the southern portion of the peninsula. We passed several people on the trail but for the most part had it all to ourselves. Until we got about two-thirds of the way through. We came to a point where there was a little shelter, picnic table and grill. In the summer it would be an awesome place to have a picnic (although it would be quite a hike to get there with charcoal, food, drink, etc.). We decided to take a quick little break and sit at the picnic table which was inside the shelter and thankfully had no snow on it. No sooner had we sat down then we started hearing voices, getting louder and closer. The shelter was about 20 yards off the trail so based on their voices we assumed they were coming to the shelter too. So we stood up just as they came around the side. It was a group of three that we had already passed way back at the beginning of our second hike. So we made it about two-thirds of the way around the loop in the same time they made it one-third of the way around. We rock at hiking — we let no snow melt under our boots! We know speed is not necessarily the goal of hiking, but we are doing this for exercise AND to see nature, not just to see and photograph nature. Two completely different styles of hiking. We continued on our way and about 50 yards down the trail came across two skiers coming off the lake — it looked like they were headed to that shelter as well. Apparently a very busy place even in the middle of winter. We made our way back to the van and were ready to head off for the rest of our day.
#SupperClubSaturday was going to be at yet another place that we have driven past countless times over the last couple of years but have never stopped. We have to mention the mystique of the true Wisconsin Supper Club. These are not “fancy” restaurants, they are not all glamored up with the intent to impress. Rather they are “down home” places that serves awesome food and drink. That brings us to the Wildcat Supper Club just outside of Neilsville, WI.
Driving past you are apt to think it is just a little country bar that hung a “supper club” sign out front to try to attract more people. In fact many times when you go past you will see a whole parking lot full of ATVs — again just making it seem like more of a bar on the trail. But this is truly a top-notch supper club in every respect! We stopped at the bar for a quick drink before being seated at our table. Our waiter was awesome! The food was amazing. We started out with calamari — something Tammy has decided she really likes after several Supper Club Saturdays !! Yay!! It was interesting in that it was cut into steaks instead of rings, but very flavorful and definitely hand cut and breaded. Tammy had dill pickle soup instead of her usual salad and she couldn’t stop talking about how good it was (just the thought of it made Mike’s stomach turn however….). Mike always has his prime rib, but the Wildcat only had smoked prime rib — not Mike’s favorite. (Which is really strange given his love of everything smoked at home on his smoker, but I guess it is because he learned to love prime rib the old fashioned way.) He actually said it wasn’t too bad. Tammy had a steak that she really enjoyed. As usual we did not partake in dessert.
One of the REALLY nice things about stopping at the Wildcat Supper Club is the drive home – only 49 minutes!! We’re used to a couple hour drive (or longer) on the way home on ‘Splorin Saturday. Mike was barely able to even get tired while on the way. One of the closest supper clubs we have eaten at while Splorin’.
Not wanting to let any snow melt under our feet — we headed off bright and early, amazingly enough, right on time at 6:58AM on Saturday morning. Why 6:58AM? So we can get on the road before the Saturday Morning Polka Party on Y106.5 gets started of course!! Let’s get this party started!!
Breakfast was in a little Wisconsin town that we are very familiar with — Abbotsford, WI. This cute little town is right on Highway 29 about halfway between Eau Claire and Wausau. In the long-passed days you HAD to go right through town, but since they have built the new multi-lane highway you can easily miss the town if you’re not paying close attention. Not only did we go here every time we headed toward eastern Wisconsin, but we also had many years of show choir competitions in Colby which is very near. Our usual stop has been the Abby Cafe, but the luster has kind of worn off that restaurant so we were looking for something different. We stopped in Medo’s Family Style Restaurant, just up Highway 13 a little ways. We knew we were in the right place when we had to pass four groups of gentleman’s coffee klatches to get to our table. The other tip-off was when our waitress asked if we happened to see the daily specials on the sign when we walked in. We had to say we didn’t, but here response was classic: “Neither have I, let me go read them and let you know what they are”. Usual breakfasts were had and the food was good!
The last reason this was our kind of place was when an elderly couple walked in and sat down and the waitress immediately came over with two cups of coffee and then began to write their order down and say it to them before they ever had a chance to even say anything. She got it all exactly right! Definitely our kind of place.
We sat directly below a big TV which had Fox news on (muted). The four coffee klatchers at the closest table were watching and providing a running commentary on every story that came up: the election, COVID, the latest stimulus payments stuff, the weather, etc. Mike had an awesome idea (well, as with most of Mike’s ideas, he thinks it’s awesome anyway) that instead of Fox/CNN/MSNBC paying all these analysts that sit behind their desks and tell you what to think about the news — they should have a “Saturday Morning Coffee Klatch” show where they just setup a camera and microphone at a table to these gentleman and you get to listen in on their conversations about the world. It may not qualify as “news” — but it most certainly would be entertaining (is that what the news has become anyway?).
Our destination for Splorin’ today was Rib Mountain State Park in Wausau, WI. Those observant readers will know that we have been here before — but, that is going to happen. There are precious few places where we can spend an entire day hiking that area also driving distance. Winter also brings the additional difficulty that many of the hiking trails are groomed for cross country skiing and thus off-limits to hikers. We know there is a lot of elevation change here too (it is a mountain after all 😉 ) and that is always a plus for us too! As usual Mike has the plan — we are going to do two separate hikes each about 4 miles long. We were anxious to try out one of our Christmas presents: crampons! We had problems a couple of times last year with attempting to hike on trails with just our boots on. Boots work OK as long as the snow is not packed down and compressed into ice like hardness. There was probably 3 – 4 inches of snow and most of the trails were already well traveled, but the crampons made a HUGE difference. Without them we would have had difficulty climbing some of the hills or navigating the rock steps. We are definitely fans!!
One thing we have to point out before we even start in on how we spent our day was the weather. It was “freezing fog”. The temperature was in the low 20s and the fog was thick….very thick. Foreshadowing, but you will see quite a few gorgeous pictures (in our humble opinion) where the hoar frost is prominently displayed. We started off the day heading towards the south side of the park and the yellow trails. We had to walk through part of the parking lot and road to get to the trail. As we were passing by a gazebo that is just off the road, Mike noticed something strange inside it. So, we made a detour over to it and were not disappointed (are we ever?). The inside of the gazebo was covered with spiderwebs. “Big deal” you say? Well – these were no ordinary spiderwebs — they were completely covered with the hoar frost just like all the trees and bushes. It was amazing to see that the webs just didn’t fall down under the weight or melt from the moisture. We’re pretty sure the spiders had long abandoned these, but they were definitely a thing of beauty. The other strange thing about these is that so often you think of spiderwebs just in two dimensions, but these were all three dimensional in shape.
Leaving the spiderwebs behind we started down the yellow trail. This was a trail that we had down part of last time we were here. The only thing Tammy remembered about it was “is this the trail where we have to go straight up hill?”. Yup, she remembered correctly. Since we were starting at the top of the mountain, we headed down, down, down. We just were awestuck by the beauty of the frost on all the trees.
As we continued on, we passed quite a few people (once we go past 10 we stop counting). We weren’t really far past, but we were past so Mike stopped counting. As we traveled along the bottom of the mountain there were a couple places where we had to turn and go uphill. This reminded us just how far we had descended (and thus how far we would have to ascend) over the course of the last hour. We finally reached the far corner of the trail and began the low ascent back to the parking lot. One thing that kept us going was that, once again like Governor Knowles, we had brought bloody marys and cheese along with us. (Tammy is pretty sure this will be a new requirement of ‘splorin’.) That was a pretty good incentive to just…keep…going – to make it back to the parking lot, the van, cheese curds and the bloodys. Our total for that hike was 4.7 miles with 846 feet of elevation gain, whew!! The parking lot was directly in front of one of the Ski runs so it was neat to watch all the skiers a bit too, through to fog of course.
The second half of the day was planned to basically do the same loop on the western side of the park that we had done last time. Mike knew parts of this trail were going to be a little more tricky than the first half of the day because we were going up and down rock stairs and out near the edge of some of the bluffs (the former would be more of an issue for Tammy and the latter for Mike). As we started down the red trail we came to an “overlook”. Those of you that have followed some of our Splorin’ in the past know that we can be quite skeptical of overlooks. Sometimes they become overgrown through the years and you end up looking at trees and wondering what the view behind them is. Today was a little different. We had seen these views before and they were gorgeous. But with the fog today this is what the overlooks offered us (with the one from the last time we were here):
Amazing the difference a little bit of fog can make! Oh well, today would be focused on the hike and not the views. We headed down the other side of the mountain to the quarry trail. Mike took us long the portion of the trail that we skipped last time because we got a little lost (did we say how much we LOVE the All Trails app?). This led us up to the edge of the quarry. It was kind of surreal standing on the edge and just barely being able to make out the other side of the quarry.
We continued on down, down, down the mountain. We both knew that we had a long haul to get back up, but we don’t back away from it — although we may curse it under our breaths we rarely speak those curses out loud like we used to. Upon reaching the bottom, we started back up the Turkey Vulture Trail. Tammy remembered this trail well — it is not steep at all, but it is very looooong. It is a steady climb — about 300 feet elevation gain over 0.8 miles (try it some time 😉 ).
We made the long hike back up to the quarry and decided to take a little detour into the quarry to rest our weary legs a little. Once again, the view is breathtaking. Standing in the middle of the quarry looking around, quite a different look between winter and summer here as well. Funny how the winter picture on top looks like a negative of the summer picture on the bottom.
We still had to make it back up the quarry trail (about a mile) and along the remainder of the red trail (about 1.5 miles) before we were going to be done. Both of our sets of legs and feet were done hiking. Mike said he would try to find us a shorter way back to the car (for both our benefit…not just Tammy’s). But upon arrival at the red trail Mike thought the only options were to continue on the red trail or backtrack what we had already done. They looked to be about the same distance, so we forged on. About a quarter mile down the trail we came upon an intersection with the blue trail. All Trails failed us here — the blue trail was not on it. Mike downloaded the Rib Mountain State Park map and found that we were almost right below the observation tower which is right by the parking lot for our van! Up the blue trail we went. After climbing up a couple sets of stone stairs we could see the tower. We made a b-line for it and our van beyond. That hike was 4.3 miles and 699 feet elevation gain. Uff-dah. That was a day of hiking!
Given that we found that short-cut back to the van we now had enough time before #SupperClubSaturday for a little pitstop in Stevens Point. We stopped at Sunset Point Winery. A nice little winery right in town. Unfortunately as often happens at Wisconsin wineries, we were at a loss for the big bold dry red wines that we like so much, but they do have quite a selection. It was nice to sit and take a load off and enjoy a glass of wine. We spent half our time there trying to figure out when we actually stopped there the last time. It was well before Mike’s surgery and the beginning of our Splorin’ adventures. We finally figured it out it was Caleb Rogalski’s high school graduation party in June of 2018. We didn’t buy any wine this time, but Tammy got a nice hoody sweatshirt that shows all (or at least a lot of) the wineries in Wisconsin (another goal for us to achieve — visiting them all).
#SupperClubSaturday was one to remember. Mike found Savory Steakhouse in Wisconsin Rapids, WI, just the day before (on New Year’s Day). There was an option on Google Maps to send a message, but the restaurant wasn’t open so we thought we might hear back from them sometime Saturday once someone arrived at the restaurant. Nope — Mike heard back immediately from the owner, John Ross, who said he would put our names down for a reservation when he got to the restaurant. They then had a nice little conversation about restaurants and reservations, etc. during the pandemic. We couldn’t wait! Of course when we arrived and Mike said we had a reservation the guy just kind of looked at us like we were crazy because our name wasn’t in the book. Then he remembered having the conversation with Mike and all was good. We sat at the bar for a pre-dinner cocktail. Chris was the bartender and we had a very nice conversation about all of our hiking, etc. We also had a nice conversation with the owner about our #SupperClubSaturday travels. We ended up ordering our food from the bar and waited for it to be ready before we sat down.
The food was really good — but one thing really stood out — the soup! It was a Philly Cheese Steak soup and it was SOOOOO good (even Mike loved it, and that is saying a lot). We kept saying that we wished this restaurant was closer to home, it would definitely be a place that we would visit over and over. Unfortunately the night came to an end and we had to make the long 2 hour drive home.
Can’t wait to go Splorin’ next weekend! We have no idea where it will be, but we know it will be an awesome time!!!
It’s all too easy to put things off until later, even enjoyable things. You say “it’s OK, I will get to it later”, then “later” comes and you have something else to do (even if it is really nothing at all) and you just keep kicking the can down the road and never get around to taking care of business. That is what has unfortunately happened with this blog. The good news is that Splorin’ Saturday has not stopped, just the written accounts. Mike takes complete responsibility for this lack of follow-through. Prior to the whole COVID calamity when Mike was still traveling every week, he would write the rough draft of the blog entries while having nothing better to do at the hotel on week nights (after work, after golf, after dinner, after walking, etc.). Since Mike has not been traveling since March, he has no hotel room to sit in and twiddle his thumbs looking for something to do. Now he sits in his recliner watching TV, cooks dinner, does dishes, plays with the dog, etc. Oh well, it is what it is, or rather it is what it was because this entry is meant to catch us ALL the way up through the end of the year. Since we will be “punching the gas pedal” and getting through six months of Splorin’ in one post, there are some things that may occur: there may only be one picture per Splorin’ adventure, there may only be a short paragraph per Splorin’ adventure (although Mike has never been known to cut a story, especially a good one, (like always happens with Splorin’), short, (unless it is a multi-day trip and we did have several of those — KEEP READING!) and finally we may skip a thing or two, or forget a thing or two. We hope you will forgive us for this, we promise to be more timely in the future. Lastly before you continue on, it is ok to take bathroom breaks, meal breaks, or even reading this as “put me to sleep” bedtime reading and take several days to finish it. Get ready for a whirlwind trip through “Splorin’ Saturday: the second half of 2020“.
Oh Henry!
OK, we do have another excuse for being a “little” behind in our blogging. On June 6th, 2020 we added a new family member — Henry. Henry is a Corgi/Red Heeler (Cattle Dog) cross. He comes from an Amish farm somewhere in or around Clark County, Wisconsin, courtesy of the Clark County Humane Society. In the picture on the left he weighed a whopping 7 pounds. As we publish this 6 months later, he is about 40 pounds. Henry has been a wonderful addition to our family, is learning to be a great ‘Splorin’ companion and has brought a lot of smiles to the second half of this crazy year.
6/13/2020: Governor Knowles State Forest (1)
Mike is always on the lookout for new places for us to go — this adventure came courtesy of a book he somehow found somewhere(Google or Amazon are good bets): Hiking Wisconsin: A Guide to the State’s Greatest Hikes. Our breakfast destination for the morning was Our Place Cafe in Cumberland, WI. A nice little cafe where we were not disappointed with the men’s Saturday morning coffee klatch. This weeks breakfast had a memorable quote: Gentleman 1: “So Harold, what are you doing today?” Harold: “Whatever I damn well please”.
We arrived at the “parking lot” (it is in quotes because it literally was just a widening of a dirt road) full of vim and vigor for a 12 mile hike (6 miles up and 6 miles back). There were two cars in the lot. As we got out of the van, two ladies and a dog emerged from the trail with great big backpacks on their back. We kind of looked at each other and thought — oh boy, we are not THAT prepared for this trail. We asked how the trail was and they say “There are a lot of trees down, but it is pretty good”. There are some backpack camping sites along the trail, so these ladies and pupster must have stayed at one of those and were just hiking out. They were not kidding about the trees.
This was within the first quarter mile of the trail. Wow — lots of trees down! But we were just happy to be out and about and kept going. This trail was perhaps one of the most “primitive” trails we have ever hiked. By primitive in this case we mean very low traffic, difficult to follow and very overgrown. We got lost at one point where we followed the trail down towards the St. Croix River. There was an old boardwalk across a swampy area that was in very poor shape. Tammy waited until I crossed it to make sure that was the way we were supposed to go. It was a little wet but you could hop from lump of swamp grass to lump and make it fairly dry. Once we crossed it and got to the river, we found that there was …. nowhere to go! We were on an little island that had no other way to get off of it than the way we got onto it. We had to backtrack and see where we missed a turn. Halfway back up the hill we saw what looked like a trail leading off to the north — that was where we were supposed to have gone! Ugh!
There were many portions of this trail where it was difficult to see more than 6 feet in front of you. We had to just keep moving forward through what looked like the way the trail was supposed to go. Tammy follows behind Mike and let’s him lead the way (Mike thinks its because if we see a bear, Mike will get eaten first; Tammy concurs this is the case) and usually this is not a problem. However, on this trail there were times that it was so thick that Tammy could not see Mike at all and just had to plow through the foliage where she saw Mike go. Other times she could just see a glimpse of his bright teal colored shirt.
One other thing we found on this trail was huge ferns. No, bigger than you are thinking — HUGE! Here is a picture of Tammy standing behind a bunch of them — they were about 5 feet tall. We have never seen ferns so big before.
It was shortly after ascending the bluff that we encountered some very scary wildlife. As we already mentioned the trail was very overgrown and you could not see very far off of it. Several times we could hear animals just off the trail, but could never see them. We heard something running parallel to the trail, so of course we stopped to try to see what it was. It kept moving for another 10 or 20 feet along the trail. Then in CHARGED at Mike!! All Mike could see was black/brown/white charging at him through the underbrush making a lot of noise. Mike screamed like a little girl and ran up the trail saying “It’s a badger!” As it turned out, it was not a badger, but merely a female Ruffed Grouse that was obviously sitting on a nest with baby Ruffed Grouse. Apparently they are very aggressive when sitting on a nest. This happened three times while hiking this portion of the trail — but the next two times at least we knew what it was! To this day Tammy wants nothing to do with Ruffed Grouse even when they just fly away from the side of the trails as we hike past them.
As we neared the end of the trail where we were supposed to turn around (and go to the bathroom), we passed some pretty scary looking backwoods “compounds”. One was littered with old military vehicles and LOTS of “No Trespassing” signs. Yikes! We got to Country Road O and Mike knew the boat landing and bathrooms were at the end of the road but thought the trail across the road would lead us there instead of having to hike along the road. Well, Mike was wrong…the trail across the road was just a continuation of the snowmobile trail that kept going and going. After about a mile Mike finally consulted Google Maps and saw that we were nowhere close to the boat landing (and the bathrooms). So, we turned around and started hiking back. By the time we made it back to the road we did not have enough time to go the half mile down the road and back to go to the bathroom, so we just hoofed it back along the trail towards the van. We needed to get back so we had enough time to get to #SupperClubSaturday. We ended up making it with about 20 minutes to spare — it was a total of 13.81 miles and 604 feet of elevation gain.
#SupperClubSaturday was at Wolter’s Shoreview Supper Club in Amery, WI. Dinner was good as usual at most Supper Clubs, but what made this one special was that we got to have dinner with friend that we have had since elementary school, Amy Tolzman. It was great to catch up with her and have a great dinner to boot.
6/23/2020: Door County (1)
Our Faithful Readers will know that one of the goals that we had for Splorin’ Saturday was to hike all of the Wisconsin State Parks. On New Year’s Eve 2019 we decided that our last “hurrah” would be this trip to Door County and do Peninsula, Potawatomi and Rock Island State Parks. We planned on camping for 2 days at Peninsula, 2 days at Potawatomi and spend a nice 2 days at our favorite Bed and Breakfast in Sturgeon Bay. During the beginning of this whole lock down and the wave of closings due to COVID, in March all Wisconsin state parks were closed. Thankfully they opened back up very soon, but camping was shutdown all the way through Memorial Day. When the remainder of the parks opened, Rock Island stayed closed due to high water in Lake Michigan. Due to the fact that we could not go to Rock Island, and because we had our new little puppy at home, we figured a full week away from home was not right at this time. We modified our trip to just be two days of camping at Potawatomi.
We started this trip with a trip to Fonferek’s Glen. The water was flowing very strong over the falls (which we later learned was abnormal for the summer, most of the time this is dry). As such we were only able to hike the one side of the river. But we made our way along the whole stretch.
We then made our way to our standard Door County jumping off point – the Hilton Garden Inn on Lombardi Ave. right by Lambeau Field. We went to Stadium View for socially distanced dinner and drinks. We listened to some great live music and watched the sun set over Lambeau Field.
The next day we made our way up to Sturgeon Bay and Potawatomi State Park where we were camping for the next two days. This marks a significant turning point in our Splorin’. Tammy has been after Mike to go camping for YEARS!!! Mike has always pushed back, not because he doesn’t like it, but because he doesn’t like all the preparation that you have to do ahead of time and all the cleanup you have to do after the fact. Tammy was surprised because these camping trips were his idea, maybe he was just tired of Tammy always hinting about wanting to camp? The question of the day is : Do we enjoy it and keep going or is this a calamity and we never set foot in a campground again unless a hiking trail runs through the middle of it? Read on!!!
Mike was worried from the get-go with camping as Door County received about 5 inches of rain in the 4 or 5 days leading up to our trip. Camping in the rain is not much fun according to him and there was standing water in all the fields from just west of Green Bay to Door County — not a good sign. Tammy also mentioned that some people on Facebook were posting about “rivers running across roads where there are usually no rivers” in Potawatomi State Park. We arrived mid-morning and headed for the campgrounds to at least drive by our site. Well, there were indeed rivers going across the road, uh-oh. Driving through the campgrounds, it seemed like every other campsite was either underwater or had very large puddles in it. When we got to our campsite (#55) it was clear of water (which is good because #54 was under about 18 inches of water) but full of kids on bikes. We stopped and got out to survey the site and saw that the kids were playing in a small stream that was running behind our site (the source of one of the rivers over the road).
Adults were there with them. Apparently they didn’t care that they were in our site, and we were going to go for a hike and then come back around Noon and get camp setup; hopefully they would be gone then.
Hiking was fabulous as usual — can just never get enough of it!! Potawatomi is the Eastern Terminus of the Ice Age Trail, so we were along that for a while.
By the time we got back to camp the kids were gone, YAY! But the kids bikes were still there, BOO! So Mike just rolled them way to the back of our campsite so that we could begin setup. Luckily setup went smoothly and except for a passing shower, it was an easy setup.
However after getting done with setup we saw on the radar that a little thunderstorm was heading our way. So — instead of riding it out like true campers, we jumped in the van and made our way to Door 44 Winery. We enjoyed a tasting and then a couple glasses of wine (and of course Tammy bought a bottle or two too). The rain passed and we headed back to camp where it was thankfully still dry. We went for a hike that evening and had a dinner of grilled chicken over the fire — yum!
On Thurday 7/25 we headed to Whitefish Dunes State Park first. We hiked several trails there and made our way to Cave Point County Park.
That park is cool, but it was just way too crowded for us. We liked our hiking much less crowded before the pandemic and now we insist on staying away from the crowds.
After hiking for 3 hours we were off to … another winery!! This time we stopped at Stones Throw Winery — one of the first wineries we visited in Door County way back when that actually had wines that we liked. Now after all of Mike’s health stuff we can’t do sweet wines, but even before that we never liked them. We did a tasting with a young man who you could tell was new to the whole tasting game. He did well trying to explain the wines to us, but it was pretty obvious he was going through the memorized lines for the wines. However, twice when we asked questions that he had no idea of the answer — to his credit- he went and asked a more experienced person and got the answers for us.
After buying a couple bottles of wine we decided to have a quick lunch… and more wine! As we sat out on the lovely sunny patio we were glad to be sitting in the shade AND we were the only ones out there! The waitress was lovely, we obviously knew exactly what we wanted having just come from the tasting room and we ordered a bottle of it and some appetizer-y food for “lunch”. Another couple was brought out and sat close to us. It was kind of a bummer to not be the only ones on the patio anymore, but we soon got over it. We put our eavesdropping ears on and found out that this couple was on their honeymoon. Their wedding was originally supposed to take place in April, but had to get pushed back and back because of COVID. They finally just went to a court and got married with just their parents there. They were going on and on about how much they liked the bottle of wine they were drinking. Mike had to go to the bathroom — and when he came out he let Tammy know that he purchased a bottle of wine for the couple (to be delivered to them after we left). We took the opportunity to wish them a happy marriage and although that bottle of wine can’t make up for all the plans they had to change, we hope it made them smile!
We were then off to our second park of the day, Peninsula State Park. We love this park — but so do too many other people. We knew it would be busy, but still had to stop and see if we could find any trails that weren’t too crowded! We hiked the Eagle Trail which is an awesome trail along Eagle Harbor overlooking the town of Ephraim on the other side. It is a challenging trail where you hike down along the edge of the water and up to the base of the cliffs towering overhead. Many times the footing was a little difficult due to the recent rain, but we survived! We did another hike and then were ready to head back to camp for a relaxing evening sitting by the fire, playing cards and Guess Up, and just enjoying the quiet.
Sunday, we decided to kind of sleep in and then make our way back home. The view out our tent window was spectacular before we started packing up:
We made one pitstop on the way to get in just a little more hiking. We stopped at Blahnik Heritage Park in Algoma, WI. Yet another of Mike’s obscure finds. The park itself was kind of small with a little lake and loop hiking trail, overall it was about 1 mile of hiking — not the normal distance we’re looking for ona hike, but it was nice nonetheless.
But, luckily enough the Ice Age Trail ran right by the park. It was a very flat and open section of the trail along former railroad tracks, but it was a very nice 6 mile walk to add to the walk at the Heritage park.
It was then an uneventful drive home….and back to the real, non-Splorin’, world. But back to our little Henry who we missed alot over the weekend –just like one of the kids.
7/4/2020: Apostle Islands
The Fourth of July just isn’t the same during a pandemic, and it was going to be very hot here in Eau Claire, so we decided to take the opportunity to head north. Hopefully, the weather would be a little bit cooler. We decided on the Apostle Island lakeshore on Lake Superior, specifically Meyers Beach.
This is a long drive, so we were out the door shortly after 5AM. Thankfully this time of year it is already light out by then! We stopped at Wendy’s Place for breakfast in Minong, WI. This was a lovely little restaurant that took social distancing seriously. There were several other people there, but not crowded at all.
We then had to leave to get to Meyer’s Beach. Mike wanted to get to the parking lot before 9AM as it is a very small lot. We thought, with the warm weather, the later in the morning it got, the more cars (and thus, people) would be there. We pulled into the parking lot right at 9AM — and lucky we did as we got the very last parking spot!! Woo Hoo!!! It appeared as if most of the people were there for kayaking tours so we set off on the trails, hoping we would beat the crowds.
We were hiking the Meyers Beach Sea Cave Trail and we couldn’t wait to start. The trail was absolutely amazing; the views that were surreal with the fog hanging around the cliffs. We hiked the first two sections of the trail. Well maybe not all of it, Mike doesn’t do well with sheer drop-offs where certain death awaits with a simple misplaced step. He did much better than Tammy expected but she wasn’t surprised when he finally said we had gone far enough along the sheer cliff edge.So we turned around and headed back.
The trail starts off with boardwalks through a hardwood forest.
After about 1.5 miles you come to the first look at the caves.
Just a little further you make it to the crevasse. There were a lot of kayakers enjoying the views from the water.
The rest of the hike was breathtaking — the fog was amazing and cloaked the caves while still allowing peeks of them. The pictures speak better than words.
As previously mentioned the fog really made everything just pop — the views were crazy good. Here are two selfies to show just how fast the fog was lifting. These two pictures were taken 18 minutes apart.
As we headed back to he parking lot, we encountered a lot of people just starting their hikes. Time for us to go. We then were off to another trail that Mike found in the Hiking Wisconsin book. Lost Creek Falls in Cornucopia, Wi. With a name like “lost creek” surely there had to be hardly any people there, right? Well it started off that way. Mike followed the directions to the parking are that look more like a place for a serial killer to drop dead bodies than a parking area, but we got the van in there so we decided to head down the trail. It definitely was a more “rustic” trail but not quite as bad as Governor Knowles. The trail was pretty wet and there were quite a few bugs, but we finally got towards the end where the falls were.
We had not seen a single person the whole 2 miles out to the falls, so we thought we would have the place to ourselves. But there is another parking area on the other side of the falls where many others must have parked. As we made our way down the trail toward the falls, there was a family with several young kids. To get the falls themselves you have to cross the river on stepping stone style rocks. This family came up behind us…like RIGHT behind us. The kids were pushing past us on the rocks forcing us to have to stop and let them pass so they didn’t fall in. As soon as we got across, the parents then raced up to the falls and started splashing around in the water and climbing up the falls. Really kind of ruined the nature of it all. 😦 We did not stay long but Tammy did manage to get one picture of the Falls.
We made our way back to the car and got cleaned up for #SupperClubSaturday. Our destination this week was Tally Ho Supperclub in Hayward, WI. We have reservations at 4. As we have said many times, we eat VERY early on Supper Club Saturday. We have many reasons for this. One, we do not have lunch on Splorin Saturday — usually just a handful or two of peanuts or almonds during hiking breaks, so after 5+ hrs of hiking, we are hungry! We also typically have a fairly long drive to get home, so it is nice to be home at a decent hour. Lastly, with a pandemic still going on, we feel safer being one of the first people in and out of a restaurant before the crowds start. AND we feel strongly about supporting local restaurants in these hard times. ESPECIALLY “old fashioned” supper clubs that seem to be becoming more and more rare. We walked in shortly after 4 and they welcomed us by name “Good afternoon, Mr. Schmitz”. Apparently we were the only ones with reservations. We actually had the whole restaurant to ourselves until 5 minutes before we were leaving. As we have said, we like very small crowds.
We then were on our way back home to see how the pupster was fairing without us there for the day.
7/12/2020: Door County (2)
Back in April when all camping at Wisconsin State Parks was shutdown (or rather not allowed to start) we didn’t know if they would open back up in May or June, or ever for that matter. In order to “protect” our Plan, we booked the same trip that we had for June in July too — just in case camping ended up being closed all the way through June. Luckily it wasn’t, and we were able to spend the weekend at Potowatomi State Park, (see above) but we kept our camping reservations and Bed and Breakfast booked for July in the hopes that Rock Island State Park might open up. That didn’t happen, but we decided spend another weekend splorin’ Door County, except we opted to stay at the Garden Gate Inn Bed and Breakfast instead of camping. This was to be a more relaxing trip rather than a hard, long days hiking trip.
On our way to the Hilton Garden Inn in Green Bay to start our trip, we first stopped at the Thorpedo restaurant in Thorp, WI. It was a great breakfast to start the weekend. Our first hiking stop was just north of Green Bay at the Barkhausen Waterfowl Preserve. Not a lot of hiking there, but enough to be very enjoyable. We saw many incredible flowers while there.
We even found the old Schmitz Homestead (not sure how, but must be a relation somewhere way back in time).
We also found some flooded wetlands and one thing I will never forget about this preserve is all the frogs we saw! There were many times walking down the trail that all of a sudden there were 20 or 30 (or more) frogs jumping for the edge of the trail to get our of your way. It actually made us jump a few times too because they all went at once!
As we neared the end of the trail we came across a Sandhill Crane — Mike’s favorite bird!!!
We finished up our time at the refuge by walking an interactive nature trail that looked like it would be alot of fun for kids. Tammy’s “big kid” also had some fun.
Since we still had a lot of time left in the day, we decided to take a walk along the Fox River on the Fox River Trail.
It was a very nice stroll by the river, and we even took a little time to stop and have a cocktail.
But it was much more fun on the way back when we found ourselves walking through some very old neighborhoods that have some simply fantastically huge old houses. It was like walking in the Third Ward in Eau Claire. We then were off to the hotel and dinner and drinks at the Stadium View like always! We made sure to make a birthday toast to Tammy’s sister, Vicki, in sight of Lambeau Field!
We got up the next morning and headed toward a nice park that we had stopped at before — The Ridges Sanctuary in Baileys Harbor. Last time we were here we loved hiking the ridges where we saw Dwarf Irises (one of the only locations in the world where they grow). But that was in mid-May so we were not sure if they would still be in bloom this time. When we arrived we (foolishly) decided that we were going to try the hike without bug spray. It went well for the first half mile while we were on boardwalks, but as soon as we hit the actual ridges — we were very rudely attacked by hundreds of horse flies. We beat a hasty retreat back to our car and doped up with lots of bug spray. We then headed off again. The bug spray did an excellent job of keeping us from being bitten by the horse flies, but it did NOTHING to keep the horseflies from swarming all around us. It was just too much — we bailed. Tammy had flashbacks to our first visit to Straight Lake (see blog post from 6/8/19)
We then headed to Ellison Bluff State Natural Area where we were planning on having a picnic lunch of hot dogs on the grill. As we pulled into the park we found quite a few cars but not many people and we were able to snag an awesome picnic table with a grill right next to it. The view was simply astounding!!
We then did a little hiking and were off to the B&B for some rest and relaxation. But before we could get there…darn it, we ran into another winery! Harbor Ridge Winery is another little winery that offered awesome wines (not just those yucky, to us, sweet wines). We did a tasting, had a glass and (of course) bought a couple of bottles. Then we were finally off to the B&B. We have stayed at this B&B two other times and just love it. We were able to get our favorite room, the English Lavender, complete with a 2 person jacuzzi and balcony overlooking the shipyards of Sturgeon Bay. The Innkeeper, Robin, is just the sweetest and Tammy loves to listen to all of her stories. As much as Tammy loves camping, staying at B&B’s is still probably her favorite way to vacation.
Even though it wasn’t Saturday (it was Monday, close enough) we found the Nightingale Supper Club in Sturgeon Bay and had an absolutely fabulous dinner! Then back to the B&B with enough time for a quick walk to Sunset Park where we watched an amazing sunset and then back to our balcony for some wine and cribbage.
On Tuesday we were up bright and early to go spend the day on Washington Island. No Rock Island State Park to visit, but we had never been to the Island in our many trips to Door County so we decided this was the time! We knew there was a chance of rain, but what the heck, we were in it for everything we had! Once we got off the ferry we headed directly to Percy Johnson County Park. This is a very small park and we were hoping it wouldn’t be too busy. We were rewarded with yet another great picnic table, grill and awesome view for us to have a nice leisurely picnic.
One of the big “draws” of Washingtion Island is Schoolhouse Beach – we decided NOT to go there to stay away from the crowds. The weather was kinda cool and overcast, so it might have been ok, but we decided we would save that for whenever we come back to get to Rock Island and finish off our State Park tour. We then were going to try the Mountain Park Lookout Tower. As we kind of expected, the tower itself was closed (due to the inability to socially distance yourselves on it) — which was fine with Mike, but we decided we were going to do the hike up the hill and steps for some good exercise. Thankfully we did — as we got to the top we realized there was a nice hiking trail up there too! So down the trail we went. After about 5 minutes of hiking, we started hearing thunder in the distance. It was kind of strange because we had an almost 360 degree view on the top of the hill and could not see any storms. But slowly, the sky in the west began to darken. We decided to cut the hike short and head for Fragrant Isle Lavender Farm and wait out this storm there. We made it to the farm just before the storm hit so we were able to walk around the gardens just a little bit until the skies opened up into a torrential downpour. The skies were pretty eerie right before the storm hit.
Tammy made good use of our time waiting out the worst of the rain in the gift shop and found a few things to bring home. Lavendar is her favorite fragrance. After the rain passed we decided to get in line for the ferry back to the mainland. It was a very bumpy, rainy, ferry ride!! Waves were crashing over the front of the ferry and we were in the second card from the front! This was our view.
On the way back to the B&B we may, or may not, have stopped at Door 44 Winery again. OK, we did — it was so good the first time, we decided to give it a shot (or rather a bottle of wine) again! The rain was done, but it was very windy. After getting back the B&B we got changed and went for a walk through Sturgeon Bay to the Stone Harbor Restaurant and Pub where we had a wonderful dinner on the patio overlooking the bay. It would have been completely delightful if it were not for the two ladies sitting behind us that obviously had too much wine and took every opportunity to dig on the husbands who were not there — including laughing at one as they chose to let his phone call go to voice mail because she didn’t want to have to deal with something with the kids. This was one time where our eavesdropping ears were not happy. Oh well — at least we had good company at our table!!!
On Wednesday it was time to head for home. But not before a quick stop in Fish Creek for a walk around town. We really aren’t “touristy type” people and in this case there were just too many people for our liking even on the streets. Most places were doing a pretty good job with “social distancing” protocols, but it just wasn’t much fun so we had a quick bit to eat at Junipers Gin Joint and got in the car for our 3.5 hr trip home. Once again, we were excited to get back to our little (but getting bigger) Henry.
7/31/2020: Lake Wissota State Park (1)
Ok, we admit it…we were bitten by the camping bug during that first trip to Door County this summer. Shortly after that trip Mike made several reservations for camping and this one was the first one. We have high hopes that Henry will transform into not only our constant companion at home, but also on the trails of our hikes. If this is going to happen, he will also have to be a camping dog. We wanted to introduce him slowly to camping and see how he reacted. Since Lake Wissota State Park is so close to home, (20 minutes or so) we figured this was a good place to be his introduction since we could take him home easily enough if it just didn’t work out at all.
We decided to leave him at home on Friday evening while we set up camp and we would return and get him in the morning. So we got camp set up and went for a hike.
We returned just before sunset to make dinner. That is where Mike learned that it is best to prepare dinner earlier in the evening, at least while the sun is still up. Natural light is so much better to cook and get stuff done around camp. Once the sun goes down, it is time for relaxing around the fire.
We picked Henry up Saturday morning and brought him out to the camp site. He really enjoyed it! We hiked all day and when we were not hiking he was knocked out sleeping.
Speaking of hiking — that is what this blog is all about after all — we had several really good hikes with Henry on this trip– he is an EXCELLENT trail dog. He stays on the trail likes to follow Mike and stay in front of Tammy. He doesn’t try to pull off the trail and on those times when he is out in front he has a very good eye for where the trail is (sometimes better than Tammy).
The hiking was awesome but Henry’s behavior in camp was even better. We really had no idea how he was going to react. He did very well!! He didn’t bark too much, usually only in response to other dogs barking. People would walk past our campsite and he would barely react at all! Woo Hoo!!! There were two little girls camping a couple of sites down from us with their dad who stopped by our site every chance they got to pet Henry.
The other worry we had was him sleeping in the tent. He went into his kennel and slept all night long without hardly a peep. When we got up in the morning to take him out to pee, we opened the kennel door expecting him to bound right out. Nope. He would not come out of his kennel. Apparently he was afraid of the tent floor.
Mike took a blanket and laid it down between his kennel and the tent door and he ran right out of the tent! It was hilarious.
We hiked a couple more trails on Sunday before heading back to the real world.
8/14/2020: Black River State Forest (1)
More camping!! Since Henry did so well two weeks ago at Lake Wissota, we took him with us again this weekend to the Pigeon Creek Campground located in the Black River State Forest. We arrived and began setting up camp. We had Henry with us this time and he kept want to “try to help” — otherwise known as getting underfoot while we tried to get everything in place. Between Henry and the mosquitoes, camp setup took some time, but we finally got there and had our traditional bloody mary’s by the fire.
Unfortunately just after we got done setting up camp, our neighbors pulled into their site with a small RV. They got out with their dogs and walked around the campsite. Henry did really well and tried his best to ignore them. But, what we couldn’t ignore was when they immediately fired up their generator on their RV. It was very loud and rather annoying. After about 2 hours of this, Mike went over and very pleasantly asked (that is so NOT the normal Mike 😉 ) about the generator. They said they would shut it off at 9PM. We knew for a fact that generators were not allowed at all in the campground, but decided not to press the point. Once they did shut it off, it was nice and peacefully quiet.
We just hung around the campsite and went for a couple of walks around the campground that Friday evening. There is a very nice beach that we walked up to since were going to be hiking around and beyond the next day. Time for some sleep to prepare for the next day. What is that? Ominous foreshadowing music playing in the background? Oh no….
Mike being the weather junky that he is, we knew there was a chance of rain this weekend. But all the forecasts said light rain in the middle of the night – no big deal, right? Mike started checking the radar around 10PM and could see there were some storms up by Eau Claire, but they seemed to be little pop-up type storms. Around 11PM we got a text message from our son letting us know there were storms headed our way. Around midnight we started hearing the thunder. Instead of dying out the storms were getting stronger. Around 12:30AM it started raining. A nice gentle rain at first, but we could see on the radar that would not last. The storms stretched all the way up I-94 and were actually elongating. The next 3 hours was a constant downpour with lots of wind and thunder. We kept checking the tent and it seemed to be staying dry — for a 20+ year old tent that is amazing! But alas, it was not to last. Mike noticed a drip hitting him on his forehead. A quick flashlight check around the tent saw that the rain fly was saturated and plastered on the top of the tent, so the rain was wicking through and it literally was now raining inside the tent. The blankets were getting wet, the floor of the tent was getting wet; it seemed the only thing staying dry was Henry in his kennel (who blessedly either slept through all of this or was too afraid to make so much as a whimper). The morning revealed the extent of the wetness. Blankets wet, bags wet, ugh. We took just about everything out of the tent and hung it up around camp and on the van and for the most part it dried out pretty well. Thankfully there was no more rain in the forecast for the weekend so we were good to go…..(damn you ominous foreshadowing music!!!).
We spent the day hiking — we hiked the Black River State Forest before so we took Henry on one of the easier trails that had some nice hills, but nothing to big. He handled it like a champ! When we got back to camp Henry was tired and hungry (not sure in which order). Later in the day we went for a longer, 6 mile hike — Henry again did amazing! He sure loves his time in the woods with us! It was time to relax in front of the fire for the evening.
Around 2:30AM Mike woke up to the sound of … thunder? No, that’s can’t be! The forecast said 0% chance of rain. Well, apparently 0% doesn’t mean what it used to mean. A quick check of the radar shows a little storm heading our direction, but thankfully it looks like it was going to miss us by like 10 miles. Until it got about 10 miles away and it started expanding, and expanding…. Well it rained hard for 2 more hours that night. Cue the wet blankets, wet tent, and a very unhappy Mike. All told that weekend Black River Falls received 3.5 inches of rain, 2.5 inches Friday night and 1 inch Saturday night. Oh well… It was a “splorin’ adventure” that is for sure.
Sunday we took Henry on one of the more challenging hikes in the Black River State Forest — the Wildcat Trail. This is a 5 mile loop that has about 600 feet elevation gain. Last time we were here we called this the “roller coaster” trail because it was constant up and down. Henry loved it — he loved it so much that toward the end of the loop he still wanted to run. Tammy obliged him and would run with him for a tenth of a mile or so at a time — Mike? Nope, he just walked.
On the drive home we stopped at the East Fork Campground to take a look at where we would be camping, sans Henry, next weekend for our anniversary. We somehow snagged a VERY nice camp site!! Can’t wait. Luckily you don’t have to — just keep reading.
8/21/2020: Black River State Forest (2)
See, that didn’t take long to get here, right? Well, you’re lucky, because we had to wait an entire week to get here. Something exciting happened in between last week and this week — we got a NEW TENT! Mike had been looking for a new tent since we rekindled our love of camping and especially after our soggy trip last weekend! He found one that we loved almost immediately, but it was out of stock… 😦 Well, it finally was in stock, Mike ordered it, and it arrived in 2 days (on Thursday instead of Sunday like the shipping notice said)!!! Happy anniversary to us!! This is a very nice, large, tent with a screened in porch and lots and lots of room (did we say it was large?). An 11 person tent for the 2 (or 3 if Henry comes along) of us. Yep!
Since this was our anniversary weekend (woo hoo 29 years!!) we left Henry at home and decided to “ruff” it without him. We had an awesome campsite! Right on the river with a view to boast about!
But, our luck with neighbors was just as good this weekend as last weekend. When the neighbors arrived it wasn’t that big of a deal, but then throughout the evening, more and more people arrived. Eventually there were six cars and about 15 college-aged kids in the campsite next to us. Mike dubbed them “COVID Stew” as we could easily hear their conversations – it was a group of kids having one last hurrah for the summer before returning to school. Our neighbors on the otherside were also very vocal, and in this case it was a family with a not too happy mom most of the time. 😦 Not much peace and quiet to be had even looking out at the beautiful river.
Just before we were ready to go to bed, the rain started. Just a nice light shower, nothing heavy. So, we grabbed our camp chairs and our wine and moved into our screened porch in our new awesome tent!! We were able to sit, listen to the soft rain (and our “COVID stew” neighbors) while still being outside — it was wonderful!! As our luck would have it, that light rain turned into yet another bunch of thunderstorms and downpours. But — guess what, we were in our new tent!!! It stayed absolutely bone dry (except where a little wicked in from the pulls on the window ties). The “COVID stew” bunch kept up their loud partying all through the storm — I guess they were to their trip. One of the memorable quotes that we overhead was “I forgot my two foot bong in my grandma’s attic”.
Also in the middle of the night about 3AM (right at the tail end of the rain) we heard someone screaming and then someone else very loudly shouting “I’M WAY OVER HERE!!”. Tammy thought for sure they were saying “It’s over here” and was convinced there was a bear rampaging through the campgrounds. When we got up the next morning the neighbors on the other side of us (not the “COVID stew” group) was gone — but all their stuff was still there. Two tents with the doors standing wide open, and stuff strewn all over their campsite. The next day we went to talk to the Ranger about the “COVID stew” group and he asked us if we heard what happened about 3AM. Apparently someone in the site said that someone was peeking in their tent in the middle of the night, which was the screaming we heard. Apparently she yelled at someone thus eliciting the yelling that I heard. She went to the Ranger and woke him up saying that she was leaving the campground because she did not feel safe. Nice.
Saturday we went hiking at Levis Mound Trail System. This again is one of those places that we had never heard of before. Mike loves finding these places and does an OK job of it. (Tammy thinks he is an AMAZING Splorin’ Master!) When we arrived we were very surprised to see the parking lot very full. This is not only a set of hiking trails, it actually is primarily used for mountain biking. There is a huge field where people can come and set up tents too. The funny thing was that with all the rain the night before, everyone had sleeping bags, blankets, etc. all hanging out on their car doors, windows and draped over the hood of their cars. It looked just our campsite the week before.
Not going to kid you at all — the hiking here was FABULOUS!!! Lots of great trails. They are mountain biking trails too, but we encountered only 3 people on bikes the entire day. There were some absolutely amazing overlooks along these trails. They were breathtaking! There were also some very interesting trees that were literally gripping onto the cliffs by their roots.
Tammy is absolutely fearless. While Mike stays well back from the edge of the cliffs (usually with a death grip on a tree, rock or other stationary object), Tammy likes to charge right out the the very edge hanging her toes over the great precipices that we always seem to encounter. One of these times she will plunge to her death, and I’ll try to get pictures when it happens. I am always ready with my phone when she is out there on these, and thank God, it hasn’t happened yet.
After hiking all day, we made it back to our campsite to change in time for #SupperClubSaturday (yes, it always has to be a hashtag because it **IS** a thing!). This week’s episode was at Evergreens Supper Club just outside of Black River Falls, WI. We arrived and were shown to our table. We were a little disappointed that we were one of the two couples there and we were sat at a table right next to the other couple. 😦 So much for social distancing. The food was….OK. They supposedly have Prime Rib on Saturdays, but only when they don’t have ribs. Well, they had ribs, so Mike had to order something completely different. The overall experience was also…OK. It wasn’t bad, but with all the EXCELLENT places we have been to, we certainly will not rush to make it back.
One thing we will rush to get back to is that campsite that we had again. And we did make it back in time for a gorgeous sunset along the East Fork of the Black River.
Sunday morning we decided to sleep in and skip going any other place for hiking. The campground has a “Nature Trail” and we decided to give it a shot. So many times these types of nature trails are a half mile long and nothing more than a short little loop. This, on the other hand, was several miles long and led back along the river. When we reached the end of the trail, there literally was an “End of Trail” sign (so of course we needed a selfie with it).
We cannot wait to get back to this campground!!!
On the way home we made a pitstop at another place that we have passed many, many times — the Listeman Arboretum just outside of Neilsville, WI. This is just off Highway 10 and we have seen the sign countless times on many of our other Splorin’ Saturdays; we finally took the opportunity to stop and see what it was all about.
As we pull into the parking lot we see there is a fairly large family gathering by what Mike thought was the trail we were supposed to go down. However, we see no signs, no maps, no nothing….but another trail off the corner of the parking lot. We just headed down that trail and off into the woods. We soon intersected with another trail. At this point Mike still thought this was just a tiny little loop trail, so we headed away from the parking lot. We soon came to another intersection and went to the right again. Soon we came to an obvious trail sign, the letter “E”. Hmm….where were A, B, C and D? Oh well, it was a nice walk so we just kept going. We soon found F and G. Then we saw what looked to be a little building on the far side of a bridge. Turns out this was the another entrance to the trails and there were signs and trail maps.
Picking up a map we now knew where we were! We followed the trail down to the Black River. We then followed the river down to the where the trail actually went under Highway 10 and a little loop on the south side of the bridge. Coming back we made our way back to the parking lot and had to basically walk through the middle of some kind of family picnic in order to make it back to the van. This was really a quite unexpected surprise to end the weekend!
8/29/2020: Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge
Some things are worth the wait…this is one of them! Back in the beginning of June we planned to go here, but at the last minute high water in the Trempealeau River forced a last minute change of plans. We started today off at the Coffee Pot Cafe in Independence, WI. We had a very delightful breakfast and conversation with the owner. She told us stories of her kids and grand kids all the while making sure our coffee and bellies were full. Tammy’s comment was “I just want her to be my grandma”. Tammy is also sad — we forgot to take a picture.
The wildlife refuge is right on the Mississippi River and consists of wetlands, prairie and dikes that extend out into the river — we planned to hike all three!! We started off on the prairie loop that took us down to the edge of the river at the visitors center (which was obviously closed), but we did take advantage of the bathrooms. We can just imagine what this would be like in the fall with thousands and thousands of migrating geese, swans, and other water fowl (but there are probably that many people too, and we like to avoid those kinds of crowds for now). We left and headed up a trail in the woods, we came to a little backwater slough and spooked a snake that was swimming away through the slime covered water.
We made it from there into the Prairie View Trail. This was an amazing little hike with a ….wait for it…. view of the prairie. It was like stepping back in time, you could just imagine what the whole of the Mississippi valley was like two or three hundred years ago.
The next portion was to hike out into the river onto the lower diversion dike trail. This trail goes all the way out to Trempealeau Mountain. We have seen this “mountain” from Perrot State Park on Brady’s Peak. Walking the dike was awesome! Having the Trempealeau River on one side of us and a pool of the Mississippi on the other provided an unparalleled view. We saw Bald Eagles, sea gulls, cormorants and pelicans. We also got some fabulous views of Trempealeau Mountain.
We were hoping to be able to hike right to the base of the mountain, but alas, it was not to be….so close, yet so far…
Our #SupperClubSaturday awaited us, but we had a little extra time so we were going to stop at Elmaro Vineyard which is right next to the wildlife refuge, but it appeared there was a wedding as the place was extremely crowded — definitely not our jam at this time. So instead we headed up Highway 35 to Fountain City, WI where Tammy’s parents and grandparents are from. We parked in front of their old house and walked up to Seven Hawks Winery to have a tasting and a glass of wine. Tammy couldn’t resist taking a few pictures of the Boberg house and the surrounding buildings that were so important to her childhood.
#SupperClubSaturday was at a place in River Falls, WI that we had been to many times but had not been to in a while — The West Wind Supper Club. We hadn’t been here in ages, but we certainly should have been. It was fabulous!! Tables were spaced out and our waiter was top shelf!
We will definitely be back again and hopefully sooner than the 5 or 6 years it has been since we have been here.
9/5/2020: Ice Age Trail/Brunet Island (1)
This week found us on the Ice Age Trail in the Chippewa Moraine State Recreation Area and back to Brunet Island State Park. There are days when Mike really likes to take pictures and other days when he is, for some unknown reason, not in the mood….this was one of those days. We started down the trail and it was gorgeous! But, Henry was in a barking mood today — we came across five or six groups of hikers and he…ahem…made his presence very well known. We had seemingly tried just about everything with him on walks to get him to stop barking, but one good thing that came out of this hike was the technique of taking him off the trail and distract him as the other people passed by us. But the end of our 6 miles on the Ice Age Trail he was actually allowing people to pass without hardly making a noise (but with a face stuffed full of string cheese ;-). Hey….don’t judge! We came across many tiny little lakes nestled in the woods, this is the one and only picture that Mike had from the day — it was a very pretty tree changing colors at the end of one of those little lakes.
The parking lot was getting full by the time we ended our hike but it was located at the top of a nice clearing. We decided to take a little break and sit and admire the view and have a few handfuls of peanuts. The view was fantastic and Henry enjoyed just “chilling” for a bit.
We were then off to Brunet Island State Park, where we hiked the Nordic Trail and went and did a loop around the actual island. Henry was doing much better and by the end of day was zonked out. He slept the entire ride home on Tammy’s lap in the van.
9/7/2020: Lake Menomin Park
Looking for somewhere close to home to spend a quick morning hiking on Labor Day, Mike stumbled across Lake Menomin Park in Menomonie with the All Trails app. Again, yet another that we had never heard of before. We had no idea what it wasgoing to be like, but we were willing to give it a shot. We loaded Henry in the car, put our hiking boots on and were off! (Yet again, Mike was not in the mood for pictures….sorry.)
Turns out this is hiking and mountain bike trails. We started down the large hill towards Lake Menomin and followed switchback after switchback. Eventually we made it down to the water level and followed the trail all the way along the shore of the lake to the bridge where I-94 crosses over the Red Cedar River. It turns out there is a nice paved walking/biking trail that crosses just underneath the I-94 bridge — WHO KNEW? We have crossed this bridge hundreds of times and had no clue! We took the trail up to Wakanda Park and the Lion’s Club Game Park. We were able to walk through the game park and allow Henry to checkout the Buffalo and Elk. He was rather unimpressed. But we walked back to the bridge and along the trails back to the van.
It was later that Mike found that the trails were very well described on the Chippewa Off Road Biking Association website. We now have a new resource for finding local hiking trails!!! YAY!!!
9/12/2020: Lake Wissota State Park (2)
YABP (yet another boring post), but hardly a boring weekend. Now that Mike has decided camping is “okay”, we have taken to walking through the campgrounds looking for the best campsites. Last time we were at Lake Wissota we found site #33 looked really nice. So – that is where we were. We didn’t bring the dog again for Friday night because rain was, of course, in the forecast yet again. We didn’t want to have to deal with the dog if it did indeed rain. We might pick him up on Saturday if the rain didn’t materialize, but of course it did. All through the night and morning it rained — so everything was soaked and muddy. We decided to just enjoy the weekend camping by ourselves and let Ben (our son) take care of the dog and avoid the muddy, doggy mess.
We took a nice hike on Saturday through many of the same trails that we had traveled before, but it is amazing how you can hike the same exact trail at a different time of year and things look completely different! Fall colors were just starting to show up.
Mother Nature surprises you when you are not expecting it. We walked the wildflower trail which we did midsummer already. We kept saying at that time — “I bet this is really pretty in the Spring with all the flowers blooming”. What we didn’t realize was that even in the Fall it could be pretty. Flowers past their prime, are still pretty as a flower.
Since we have been to this park a few times now, we spent a little more time just relaxing and nor ‘splorin. Unfortunately Tammy had to get back to town to start work for the first week of school, so Sunday was a lazy morning before heading back home to Henry.
9/19/2020: Starved Rock/Rock Cut State Parks (IL)
All of Mike’s time spent in Bloomington, Illinois meant that he took care of many routine things while he was there during the week instead of trying to cram them in on Fridays in Wisconsin. One of those was visiting the dentist. Since he had been home since March, he had to get in to the dentist, and instead of trying to establish as a new patient during a pandemic in Eau Claire, we decided to take a trip to Illinois and take in some Illinois State Parks while we were there!!
Asking around all our Illinois friends we heard that while Starved Rock State Park was beautiful, it was always jam packed with people. We wanted to stay away from that like the plague. (oops, too soon?). The plan was to go to Matthiessen State Park which is smaller park that is much less trafficked but still has beautiful hiking trails with awesome views. Mike did all his research on what trails we would hike, etc. and we were ready to go. However about 8PM the night before Mike found somewhere that mentioned the park was closed because of storm damage in August…ugh…sure enough, not open. With no where else to turn, we ended up being forced to go to Starved Rock.
One thing that Mike did not need to ask around about was a place to go for breakfast. That was a no-brainer to him; Woody’s Family Restaurant in El Paso, IL was the start to our day. This is a restaurant that Mike has visited many, may times with his golfing buddy, Phil. Usually they will go there after 9 or 18 holes on a hot (or cold, or rainy, or snowy…) evening on the golf course in Secor or Hudson, for dinner – he has never been there for breakfast. It did not disappoint. Not only was it what we would consider one of our quintessential breakfast restaurants – who knew the Saturday morning gentleman’s coffee klatch was alive and well in Illinois as well as in Wisconsin! (Mike is hoping he gets some information in the mail about this activity around about the time he retires.) The only bad thing was they were seated across a divider wall from us and we couldn’t really hear any of their conversation.
One thing we have learned over the course of this pandemic is that while people who usually don’t frequent hiking trails have been doing so, for the most part they are not early risers. The new plan was to get there early, get our hiking in, and get out before the masses showed up. When we arrived at 7:30 the parking lot had quite a few cars in it, maybe 20 or 30. Ugh. This was way more than we expected, but we decided to give it a shot. We made it up to the parks namesake (Starved Rock) and already it was crawling with people. It is basically a wooden boardwalk around the top of the rock and there were people everywhere already. 😦 It was absolutely gorgeous, but not so much fun trying to dodge people to get some pictures.
We decided to keep hiking thinking maybe there were just a lot of people because this was so close to the parking lot and easily accessible. In the quick research that Mike was able to do, we learned that there were several places that were still closed off due to storm damage. Our hastily made plans had us hiking up the river, taking in the gorges where we could, and then heading back on top of the bluff. One thing is for sure, this is one absolutely beautiful park!! The views along the river and the small gorges that we were able to hike were stunning to say the least.
This park had one problem…an infestation…of people. OMG! They were EVERYWHERE!! Another problem with this park is that the hiking is TOO EASY. They have put in boardwalks almost everywhere allowing people who don’t usually make it out into the wilderness to do so. It ended up just being no fun. Not only where there lots of people, there were lots of big groups of people. Never before have we seen groups of 10 – 20 people hiking together. We saw several of those large groups and they were all LOUD! We love hiking for the quiet, tranquil beauty of nature. While this park certainly had the beauty, it did not have the quiet or the tranquility that we are desperately seeking. By the time we made it back to the parking lot, this is what we saw…
UGH!!! the 20 – 30 cars turned into hundreds and hundreds of cars. Every spot was taken and people were looping the lot waiting for someone to leave. When we made it to the car we were on the hunt for a bloody mary before driving back. It took us 5 – 10 minutes to get out of the parking lot because there were so many cars sitting and waiting for cars to back out. YUCK! Thankfully we were able to find an awesome bloody mary!!! This was at Haze Smokehouse in Peru, IL. If you ever get the chance (and the darn COVID restrictions are lifted and they are allowed to open again) stop by!!
As a little breakaway from our typical ‘Splorin Saturday/SupperClub Saturday routine, we spent that afternoon/evening with Phil and his lovely bride, Beth golfing of course. Mike played terribly, Tammy played awesome and then we went to their house for an awesome dinner and some time around the fire pit in their backyard. We can’t wait to get back again!
Breakfast the next morning was not as early as we would have liked since we didn’t get back to the hotel from Beth and Phil’s until much later than we anticipated, but we stopped at Liberty Family Restaurant in Peru, IL. Unlike many restaurants that we have been stopping at, this one was pretty full. Given the state of everything still going on with COVID, we usually like our restaurants much more empty, but it was good to see this place had a loyal following of Sunday morning breakfasters. No coffee klatch though…just your standard elderly couples and several families. We had a great breakfast and were ready for our next hike!
We stopped at Rock Cut State Park just north of Rockford. One of the crazy things is that Mike would drive past within a mile of Starved Rock State Park twice a week for the last 12 years and other than seeing the signs never knew what was there. Rock Cut State Park is another on of those places except this time he literally drove within yards of it twice a week (as it abuts I-39/I-90).
This was a very nice hiking state park. As mentioned in Starved Rock we look for quietness, tranquility and beauty of nature. This park had the tranquility and beauty — but quiet? Being right along a 6 lane freeway? No way was it quiet! But it was very light on people — much better than the day before. We hiked 2.5 miles before we saw another person and 4 miles before we passed another couple along the trail. That is our kind of hiking!! We passed through woods along the freeway that opened to a very nice park area. Had it not been for COVID, we were sure this park would have been jam packed with people. Awesome picnicking areas right along Pierce Lake — it looks like they rent canoes, kayaks and paddle boats too.
Mike began using All Trails with the Pro Subscription and it has transformed our hikes! We have been able to find lots of trails and places to go that we never would have known about. Why mention this now? Well, this was a time that Mike, once again, was not in the mood to take pictures so this is really the only picture he has of the park.
You can see that we only did a small portion of the trails at the park. We were in the mood for miles this day — next time we stop we will make sure to circle the lake (and to actually get real pictures). Once again, when we were done we were ready for the 3.5 hr drive to get home and see Henry.
9/26/2020: St. Croix Crossing/Brunet Island (2)/Hickory Ridge
This weekend’s Splorin’ is very near and dear to our hearts. We went camping at Brunet Island State Park (and took Henry!) — but that is not the near and dear part. Mike’s mom passed away from Alzheimer’s Disease. If you have not witnessed it close up, consider yourself lucky and we hope and pray you never do. This weekend we tried to do our part to ensure that you do not. We participated in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s. Not only was in done in honor of Mike’s mom, it was actually done on her birthday, September 26th. The walk is a little different than it has been in the past (as is everything now with COVID), instead of meeting at a location and walking with all other walkers, it was basically “walk on your own”. We met up with Mike’s sister Ann, his niece Jenni and some friends of Ann’s. We walked the St. Croix Crossing loop with takes you down (or depending on direction, up) the Houlton hill, across the old Stillwater lift bridge, through downtown Stillwater, MN and then across the new bridge. It is an awesome walk of about 5.5 miles and 400 feet elevation gain. A very nice walking surface too!
We will definitely be doing this again. Henry did pretty good — but he likes barking!! Afterwards we enjoyed a nice picnic lunch in PepperFest Park just across the street from Mike’s childhood home in North Hudson.
Because Henry was such a barker and there were dogs all around us at Brunet Island, we decided to drop him back off at home before returning to the campground. I know, poor Henry, but we prefer to look at it from our neighboring camper’s viewpoint of — yay, peace and quiet. Once back at the campsite we had some dinner and cleaned up just in time for the rain to move it. It certainly would not be Splorin’ camping unless it rained. We were able to sit in our lovely screened porch, watch the fire, enjoy some wine and listen to the soft drip of rain drops on the ceiling. When it wasn’t raining the view from our campsite was awesome.
We awoke the next morning to the sound of an animal in our screen porch!! We keep the door zippered between the two rooms, but obviously that is not much of a separation. Is was pretty loud and it sounded like a squirrel or a racoon running around. Mike finally got up to see what it was, but he saw nothing…other than several acorns on the floor. Upon moving our backpack, we found 5 or 6 other acorns there too! While Mike was standing there, suddenly something was under the screen porch floor! Turns out our visitor was a chipmunk that we had seen the day before doing laps around our campsite. Apparently he was just looking for somewhere to hide his acorns. He certainly wasn’t doing any harm so we left those acorns alone until we packed up the next day.
One the way home, All Trails found us yet another place to hike (although it was on CORBA too) — a place called Hickory Ridge in northern Chippewa County. We arrived to find several cars there in the parking lot, but not too many! This was another hiking and biking set of trails. We decided to do the Trappers Run trail. Turns out this was an awesome choice. The colors were just starting to turn so the scenery was amazing! We only encountered two bikes on the whole 3 mile hike – not bad!
We were then back off and home to Henry ( this was taken at the campsite Friday evening).
10/3/2020: Northwest Park
All Trails strikes again!! Mike found this little gem via the app and what a wonderful little park it is!! Located on the north side of Eau Claire it is an awesome trail system that is used for hiking, biking, trail running and cross country skiing and snow shoeing in the winter. Before going we wondered how good could this be since it was in town and we had never even heard of it. After going we were sold!!
Lots of really good trails, lots of elevation changes and not too many people make for a happy hiking Tammy and Mike. Just a couple of notable things from this Splorin’. The first is trail on the far eastern side of the park called “La Roota”. This was a really cool trail as it crosses over several springs that emerge from the side hill and flow down into a wetland. These were really cool in that you had to find your way across them. Some you could jump over, some had logs in them that you had to balance on as you crossed, and one had rocks as stepping stones. Mike had no problems getting across — Tammy had Henry on his leash. Henry had no problems, but he liked to go quite a bit faster than Tammy did, so that made for some interesting crosses for her! But she stayed upright and dry so we count that as a win. The second trail is called “Nasty Goat”. This is a trail that goes side hill across a very steep slope. Lots of ins and outs and ups and downs — Henry almost pulled Tammy over the edge a couple of times. It seems that Henry just cannot understand why she needs to go so slow when can just speed along on his sure footed, short legs.
We were able to get 5.5 miles in there and almost 500 feet of elevation gain. Not too shabby for a trail system that is about 10 minutes from our house!! We will most definitely be back!
10/9/2020: Morgan Falls/St Peter’s Dome/Pattison and Amnicon Falls State Parks
Late season camping…..it was awesome! Given the fact that we started the year not camping at all, the fact that we are ending the year camping in freezing weather is almost impossible to believe. Northern Wisconsin in October, the weather can’t be that cold, can it?
We got the chance to leave early on Friday so that we could make a stop on the way to Pattison State Park. We have seen lots of neat pictures and posts about St. Peter’s Dome and decided to go and check it out for ourselves. On the way to the top of St. Peter’s Dome, you can make a stop at Morgan Falls. This is definitely a not-to-be-missed place to visit if you ever get the chance. Just getting to the falls was a breathtaking hike through amazingly bright yellow fall colors.
The falls themselves were amazing, but the hike just to get there was just as spectacular really. Continuing on from the falls towards the dome is a constant up and down (mostly up). We thank God every hike that we are in the shape we are in now because it really wasn’t that bad- but it is something a year ago we would have struggled with. A 2 mile hike to the top was definitely worth the work to get there! The view was amazing.
We were then off to Pattison State Park for some camping and hiking. The camping was a little bit chilly. It got down to the mid-thirties at night. Mike whined like a little baby about being cold, but Tammy was a champ who claims she likes to sleep in the cold (although going to the bathroom on our very cold portable toilet is a different story).
Saturday morning brought hiking on the beaver trail which was closed the last time we were here. (11/16/19) This takes you down to Little Manitou Falls. Another awesome hike along the river. There were two trails for most of the way — the official trail and the “old” trail that followed literally right along the edge of the river. We took the “old” trail and had amazing views of the river and little falls all along the way.
Little Manitou Falls is an amazing waterfall with two primary falls parts to it. We hiked around the falls, to the top and over the top of the falls. An amazing hike with lots and lots of great views.
We continued on to Big Manitou Falls. This was frozen the last time we were here, so we were excited to see it not covered in ice. Of course it was beautiful, but somehow it was more beautiful encased in ice. We hiked all the way down to the river again and sat for moment just listening to the river — it was truly relaxing.
Sunday morning found us heading back to Amnicon Falls State Park, yet another favorite of ours. Certainly not for it’s size, but for it’s beauty and all the waterfalls.
We took the nature trail as well, this time doing the sandstone quarry loop. Even though the quarry trail is marked to not go around it, there is a very well traveled trail that loops the quarry itself. If you get the chance, make sure you take it!!
We had a long drive back — made even longer because, as usual, we took the scenic route!!
10/17/2020: Crex Meadows
On the way home from our last Splorin’ adventure, Mike mentioned maybe we should go to Crex Meadows outside of Grantsburg, WI sometime. He mentioned it would be a good spot to see his favorite bird, the Sandhill Crane. While we were getting gas Tammy noticed one of our friends posted on Facebook they were there and there were “countless” cranes.
We started by stopping for breakfast at Lona’s Corner Cafe in Haugen, WI. Mike had been past here many, many times taking the boys to scout camp which just down the road a little from here. This was our typical cafe breakfast, but no gentleman’s coffee klatch. And Tammy was able to pick up a couple of kitchen dish towels too! All in all a great breakfast!!
We were off to Grantsburg. On the way into town we started seeing cranes everywhere. Almost every field had them, they were flying back and forth across the roads, you could open your window and here the loud rattling bugle calls. We stopped at the main welcome center for Crex Meadows, which of course was closed, but the Hay Creek Trail was calling. This was a nice little trail where you could walk along some of the wetland areas. Not really much to see, but you could hear the cranes everywhere!
We then moved on to Zulliger Flowage. Some of the hiking here was along the road, but it was still beautiful. Again we could hear cranes everywhere and see them flying but they are very skittish and anytime we would get anywhere near to them they were gone. We could hear a very large group up the road and as we rounded the bend in the road we could see maybe 100 cranes on the edge of a little pond. The trail we were going to go on was going to go right past them. YES! NO! Ten more steps and they all took off. It was quite the sight to see them take off at once, but that meant we would not be able to walk past them.
We then made our way to the rest area campground and hiking trail. Kind of strange that the camping here is in a rest area, but there are quite a few sites where you just kind of camp out in the open. Being the middle of October it was a little chilly, but we could imagine in the middle of spring or summer camping here could be pretty cool. You have a great view over a lot of Crex Meadows.
We had one more hike to do on the Upper Phantom Ski and Hiking trail. This was a very nice hike with the exception of the portion that they had plowed, obviously getting ready for cross country skiing. Once covered with snow it would be nice and smooth, but when were there it was like hiking across a freshly plowed field — very difficult and uncomfortable.
But once in the woods it was a very nice hike. Lots of areas that had been logged with very thick underbrush growing back and some others that were mature hardwood forest terrain. We were a little bit disappointed at the lack of cranes that we saw, but we did see some very close to the road in the fields as we were leaving.
We were then ready for #SupperClubSaturday. This was to be at a place where we had been before — Lehman’s Supper Club in Rice Lake, WI. We were really looking forward to this because the last time we were here there was a very loud class reunion going on and we were shuffled off to a back dining room. Surely during a pandemic they would not be hosting big parties. Surely we should always “knock on wood” before we think such thoughts – there was a wedding reception! So, we got shuffled off into the same back dining room.
But wait — we had the best waiter!! This waiter brought samples of some appetizers, the soup, etc. and had a story for everything. He was personable, made you feel welcome, knew when to stay and talk a little and when to leave you alone. Easily one of the best waiters around. Oh…..wait…..did I say that he was OUR waiter? No, sorry, he was the waiter for the table behind us….our waitress was run of the mill. 😦 Oh well, I think we’re done at this supper club; there are other supper clubs in the sea…..back home to Henry.
10/23/2020: Pikes Peak (IA)/Wyalusing State Parks
This is a weekend that we have been looking forward to for a very long time. Wyalusing State Park is one of the the first parks that we visited in June of 2019 when we started Splorin’ after Mike’s surgery and there was one trail that kicked Tammy’s butt (Mike’s too, but he won’t admit it). We both are in much better shape than we were back then. Bring on the hills!!
Breakfast to start this weekend was an amazing little place called Breakfast Club and Pub in La Crosse, WI. This was a totally tubular restaurant! It was “Breakfast Club” and 80’s movie themed. Mike’s favorite part was the great bloody mary we were able to get with breakfast (and FREE BACON) and Tammy’s was probably the “Wash your hands ya filthy animal” picture hanging by the sinks in the bathrooms.
We had a stop to make before we got to Wyalusing — we ‘Splored into Iowa for the first time and went to Pikes Peak State Park. This is an awesome park across the mighty Mississippi River from Wyalusing. We have read many things about this on Facebook and couldn’t wait to try it out. Since it is right on the river and bluffs we knew there would be lots of hills and great views. We did 7.2 miles and 700 feet elevation gain — a great way to kick off the weekend.
Mike is a bit of a “weather junkie” so we knew going in that this was going to be a very cold weekend. Friday was WINDY! Strong winds out of the north. Our campsite in Wyalusing was on the ridge and directly in the line of these winds. The temperature was forecast to get down into the low 20’s with 20 – 30 mph winds. To say Mike was a little worried is an understatement. He was worried we might not even be able to have a fire if the winds were that strong. When we got to our campsite we were surprised by a little meteorological phenomena. The wind, while blowing at 20 mph, would hit the bluff and shoot up, then curl over the top of the bluff leaving the edge of the bluff virtually wind free. While the 40 foot tall trees all around us were blowing and waving like crazy in the wind, at ground level there was very little wind. And, we had the greatest view from the campsite.
Saturday was for hiking. We were ready! Today was the day!!! We started out from camp and were headed down to the overlook and the Sentinel Ridge Trail that heads off of it. As we have explained before we do not like crowds nor do we like have to pass people on the trail. There was a group of 6 or 8 that were heading toward the trail we were going for. We sped up and double timed it to beat them to the trail so they would be behind us. Right as we were about to get on the trail an elderly couple started heading toward the trail too, obviously trying to do the same thing to us that we just did to that other group. We slowed up to let them go ahead of us. The lady was off like a rocket down the trail with her trekking poles. The gentleman was fast but nowhere near as fast as his wife — he trailed behind her by several hundred yards. She was “in the zone” and not waiting. It didn’t matter — they were fast and not slowing us down at all.
About a mile down the trail we came to a restroom by a picnic area, the lady was standing beside the building. Obviously the husband needed a pitstop. We cruised right past them and now were in the lead!! LOL. We just kept going, this time we knew what we were in for. A long hike down the ridge, down the steps and finally getting to the boat landing. The elderly couple had almost caught up to us, but they went to the boat landing while we were ready for our nemesis – the Sugar Maple Trail. Hiking this last June (16 months ago) we had to stop at least 4 or 5 times on our way up to catch our breath. We were ready this time. We started up the trail and saw a couple about a quarter mile ahead of us on the trail. We made our way slowly but surely up the trail — it was still quite a difficult incline to ascend, but we did it without stopping this time. We passed that couple stopped on the side of the trail breathing heavily (like we were last time) and never looked back. This was proof all our Splorin’ efforts are paying off on our overall health. Mike can make it with nary a twinge of any pain and we both, while tired, were able to recover and continue on in a minute or two. Last time we stopped 4 or 5 times for a minute or two each, so — this is HUGE progress!! Next time maybe we will jog up the hill (no, just kidding, we won’t).
We continued on to the Turkey Hollow Trail — which last time was another pain in the butt trail because we were tired from the rest of the hiking and this trail had a lot of up and downs. This time we just breezed through the trail — piece of cake. Mike was able to determine that the Old Immigrant Trail was open so we were excited for that — we would be able to hike right along the Wisconsin River where it empties into the Mississippi. One of the crazy things about this trail is we were directly below our campsite. When we say below, we really mean below — 500 vertical feet below!!! Unfortunately, Mike was not really in a picture taking mood again, but he did take a couple.
This was an incredible hike — we made it back to the campsite having done 8.3 miles and 1600 feet elevation gain!! We got ready for Mike’s birthday #SupperClubSaturday. We went to Three Mile Supper Club and hour away. It was a fantastic meal as most Supper Clubs usually are.
Did we mention it was cold outside? At least we had a two hour commute and an hour for dinner indoors. When we arrived back at the campsite we tried to spend some time by the fire, but trying to stay warm, even with the fire, was futile.
Oh well — Mike was done with camping for the year. Sleeping in a tent when it is 20 degrees and no heater in the tent is not for him.
11/7/2020: Blackhawk Ridge Trails
All Trails strikes again for this week’s Splorin’ adventure. Blackhawk Ridge Trails is an awesome set of trails that promised not many people, lots of hills and a good work out — it didn’t disappoint on any of those! We started off for breakfast shooting for a place in Elroy, WI. However, when we arrived they were not open. Their hours on the door said they were open, but the locked door and turned off lights said they were closed. We had to quickly try to find some other place for breakfast (which out in the boonies of Wisconsin during a pandemic, is not always easy to do). We ended up at Holvy’s Cafe in Hillsboro, WI. It was a very nice little restaurant…..that obviously caters to locals. We walked in and the waitress told us we could sit wherever we wanted. We chose a little table in the window. Shortly after we sat down three other groups came in and sat down and were greeted by name by the waitresses who then proceeded to go and take their orders!! Gah! We had been sitting for aout 5 minutes without being greeted. Finally Tammy had to go up and ask the waitress if we were going to get to order. The waitress apologized and said she would get our orders in before those other big groups — and she did, because our food came out first. Oh well, lesson learned (I guess the lesson is that it pays to be local).
Before we hit the trails, Mike wanted to make a detour and do a little bit of a road trip just east of Wisconsin Dells to see if we could see any Sandhill Cranes. With all of this driving through here he witnessed many, many cranes around this time of year. This is a stopping over/gathering location for the cranes while they migrate south. We were not disappointed. It took a while to find them but when we did…boy, did we find them. Unfortunately we only had our cells phones so the cameras are not that great, but there were field upon field filled with cranes — easily thousands and thousands of cranes.
After seeing all the cranes we were off to do some hiking. This was a great set of trails. We were a little surprised to see quite a few cars in the parking lot, but it was 8ish miles of trails we imagined we would not run into a lot of people. We were right! Once again, quite a lot of hills, but it was absolutely beautiful. Once again Mike was not in a picture taking mood. 😦
As we neared the end of the day we still had about an hour left to hike, we moved up the road a little bit to hike some of the trails by the Blackhawk Monument. Mike tried to plot a trail, but there were several groups of people on the trails. We made it to the bottom of a little hill. All Trails was saying we were at the end of the trail, but there was a tiny little trail that led off the clearing. It looked like it would go to the top of the hill. We decided to bushwhack our way — the trail was difficult to follow and non-existent at times, but we were able to make it all the way to the top of the hill!!
#SupperClubSaturday was at a supper club that we had passed many times before, Green Acres in Sauk Prairie, WI. We have never gone because they did not take reservations unless you had a group of 8 or more. It was always a hopping place with the parking lot filled and who knows how long of a wait. With the pandemic, they were now taking reservations — so we were in!!! The food and ambiance was awesome! Once of the better prime ribs that Mike has had (and that is saying a lot)! We were then back home to Henry in a little over 2 hours!
11/28/2020: Area 178
Strange name — cool place to hike! This is a little area just outside of Chippewa Falls right along the Chippewa River and the dam that creates Lake Wissota. Again this is one of those places that we have passed by a lot and have noticed the parking lot, but never stopped. We had Henry with us too, that is always an experience!! He did great, boy does he love trail hiking! This is too close to hunting season so we donned our blaze orange vests. Not sure if there was hunting here or not, but better safe than sorry. We eventually found a spot where there was a big gut pile, so someone was hunting here — legally or illegally we don’t know, but wearing orange never hurts at this time of the year..
We made it to the other side of Highway 178 and some very nice trails including a cute little area right on the river where people have obviously had fires and maybe picnics. There was a “ravine” trail that Mike wanted to make sure he hiked — it was really cool as you hiked up one side of the ravine and crossed the little stream that ran through it. There were spots where the trail actually went right through, thankfully dry, portions of that streambed.
When we got back to the car Tammy still needed another mile to get her 99 Walks miles in for the month, so we walked down to the boat landing and the cute little park that is there on the shores of Lake Wissota. It was very pretty!
12/5/2020: Seven Bridges (well, at least two)
We are members of the Cooper’s Hawk Winery wine club. They have a location in Milwaukee and we had either been picking up our wines when we would go visit Carrie at Marquette or last time we had Michael and Carrie pick them up when they came home – in June. With all this stupid COVID stuff neither of those has been happening. So, we decided to make a Splorin’ Saturday trip to Milwaukee, pick up our 8 bottles of wines and hopefully visit with Carrie for a little bit, socially distant, masked and outside if at all possible.
We had planned on going to Lapham Peak and doing some hiking. It was later in the year and pretty cold (mid-20s) so we thought there would not be a lot of people there. Once again, we should have knocked on wood because it was PACKED! The parking lot was full and people everywhere. We decided to find somewhere else to hike. Mike does not like last minute changes to the Plan and gets frustrated trying to find somewhere. Tammy found Seven Bridges Trail in Grant Park in South Milwaukee. Not ideal, and probably still a bit busy as it is in Milwaukee and all, but there were other trails there that we could hike too. While on the way there we decided to check with Carrie to see if she wanted to hike with us. She is being very careful with this virus and does not like to take any more chances than absolutely necessary, so we didn’t know if she would want to go with us or not. Thankfully she did!! So we donned our masks and picked her up on the way.
We made it to the park and went across the first bridge — Mike led us down some trails right on the very top of the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan, it was gorgeous, but the conversation was even better. We had a nice long hike/walk with Carrie and got caught up on everything that had been going on in their and our lives. It was a lovely 7.5 miles over 2.5 hours and we wouldn’t trade it for the world. We stopped back at their apartment for some more conversation before we left for #SupperClubSaturday at Cooper’s Hawk Winery and then the drive home to Henry.
12/12/2020: Hoffman Hills
Hoffman Hills is another one that we have done before — in fact this was the very first park we did after all the COVID lock down/stay home/etc. orders came out. It is nice and close to our home and offers some great hiking! We went to Main Street Cafe in Bloomer for breakfast. This is a place that we are very familiar with — not because we have eaten there a lot, but for their pies!! We’ve had them many times and have always gotten their pies for Memorial High School’s Pop Concert every spring. Only one picture from this day — it was Breakfast with Santa day at Main Street. It was awesome, we saw lots of families and Santa even sat down with the kids and gave them all presents out of his big bag of toys! Tammy sure does miss having little onesduring the Holidays….
We hiked the outer perimeter of the park and it was a great day for hiking! We were able to do many of the trails that we wanted to do last time but didn’t because of the snow and ice that was still there. We didn’t see many people so we got some goodmiles in too. They are some really nice trails! We only wish we could bring Henry, but alas, dogs are not allowed (although it did not stop some people).
12/19/2020: Governor Knowles State Forest (2)
Mike had this week’s Splorin’ Saturday adventure all planned. We were going to go back to Governor Knowles State Forest and continue the hike that we started back in June. We would pick up where we left off and hike the the next 8 mile segment (the Benson Creek Route) as an out and back hike. 16 miles….whew that would be a lot, but we could do it! For some reason, (maybe that ominous foreshadowing music is in his head afterall) Mike decided to call and make sure there were no issues with the trail. Thankfully he did. The ranger informed us that a portion of that trail was flooded because of a beaver dam and that there were lots and lots of trees down. We have no doubt we could have made it over and around all those obstacles at this pont in our ‘splorin’ experience, but we might not have made the whole 16 miles and we might have gotten our feet wet (not a problem in June, but definitely a problem in December). She directed Mike to an area called the Brandt Pines Ski Trail System. There were several trails and Mike was able to plan out a nice loop. It was a great set of trails — peaceful and VERY quiet. If you stopped walking you could hear….nothing. It was awesome.
We saw many great sights along this route as well. A huge root ball from a pine tree that was easily “5 Tammys” tall and was filled with boulders. Lots of little spring streams — some that were frozen, some that were free flowing. We saw a bunch of Tundra Swans on the river and saw them take off as we approached the shoreline. We also found a very cool ski shelter that had a big huge fireplace built into it.
We then had a quick break and drank some bloody marys and had some cheese that Mike somehow snuck into the van and the cooler with Tammy being none-the-wiser. (such a romantic even after 35 years!) After a 20 minute break we set off on the second part of our hike — up the Foxes Landing Route which would be a quick 3 mile up and back route right along the river. Once again — it was gorgeous, the river was beautiful all filled with ice. We lost our way at one point in time — the trail just disappeared. Luckily about 1/4 mile up the river we came to a large ravine that needed a bridge to cross it, which we did fine and we never lost the trail again. Once again we saw lots of little springs that were making their way down to the St. Croix River.
We finally made it back to the van — completely beat. We did about 14 miles and we were very thankful we didn’t have another 2 miles to do like Mike had originally planned! It was now time for #SupperClubSaturday. We were going to a place that we had already been again — Indianhead Supper Club in Balsam Lake, WI.
Once again, this did not disappoint and they did a great job at keeping up distance protocols which Tammy was a bit worried about knowing how busy it was last time we were there! Unfortunately they did not have the calamari appetizer which Tammy was looking forward to having, but the food was fantastic nonetheless. A quick 90 minute drive and we were back home to Henry! (yes, it is true — the only time Henry is still enough for a picture is when he is sleeping. 🙂
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, if you made it this far, give yourself a GOLD STAR and drop us a comment on this blog entry! We know we don’t have many readers and that’s OK, we do this for us. It has been a nice way for us to not only become more healthy but realize that we are indeed made for one another and two very lucky people!!
As Mike writes this, it is New Year’s Eve 2020. One of Mike’s New Year’s resolutions is surely going to be getting this blog done in a much more timely manner — and to make sure he is in a “picture taking mood” more often while Splorin’!!!!!!!!!!!!
Plans had been made and in place all week. We were going to be #Splorin’ at Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge along the mighty Mississippi River. This was going to be a great time #Splorin’: it is right in our neck of the woods — only about 1.5 hours away, which our Loyal Readers know is nothing for us. As the saying goes “Mike plans, God laughs” (well, close anyway). Thursday evening on their Facebook page, the wildlife refuge posts that their main entrance is closed due to high water on the Trempealeau River. The refuge is still open, but it is a 2 mile walk in from a remote parking area. With all the COVID restrictions in place, we had no ideas if bathrooms would be open or not. Luckily we could rely on our portable toilet — but that would mean going to the bathroom would involve a 2 mile hike back to the car and a 2 mile hike back into the refuge. No thanks, not with Tammy’s fickle bladder. 😦
Mike had already found breakfast and #SupperClubSaturday locations for us so we tried to ensure wherever we went we could still at least use those. We discovered long ago it is much easier to plan a location to go #Splorin’ first, and then find restaurants — we were reminded very heavily of this fact on this weekend. In the end we could not find anything too close to the refuge….in Wisconsin. But looking across the river in Minnesota, there was a state park ripe for #Splorin’: Whitewater State Park in Altura, MN. The plan did not come together until late in the evening on Friday, but wow — what an amazing park! But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
Finding open restaurants is still a little bit of a challenge — especially in Minnesota since they only allowed outdoor dining at this time. But, there is a restaurant that we have driven past probably a hundred times (or more): Pier 4 Cafe and Smokehouse in Alma, WI. Alma is right on our way to Fountain City, WI where much of Tammy’s family originates. We have always said that we should stop in; it is such a cute little place right above the lock and dam. This cafe was everything we expect in a #SplorinSaturday cafe — “hole-in-the- wall”, cute decorations, hyper-local and great food. The only thing missing was a coffee klatsch of older gentlemen– oh well, maybe next week. Food was amazing — we had our “standard breakfast” but instead of a salad we had cottage cheese. The omelets were HUGE — probably 2 inches thick and covered the entire plate. We quickly felt bad about both asking for the cottage cheese as we each got a HUGE cup (probably a cup and a half)! There was no way we could finish — in fact in the end I think both of us left half of the cottage cheese.
It was on the way to Whitewater State Park that Mike had to let Tammy in on a little secret about today’s adventure: HILLS. The wildlife refuge was supposed to be a “walk in the park” with almost no elevation gain, but the trails at this state park have a LOT of elevation gain and loss — so instead of an easy day of #Splorin’ we were in for a day of ups and downs — literally.
However, before even starting hiking we had an interesting time. Since this is Minnesota, we’re non-residents and didn’t have a sticker to get into the park. We could not find any information about how we could buy one at the park — nothing said they were open, but it also did not say they were closed. We thought we would be able to get a day pass, or something. Turns out the only way to get a pass is online — but this park is in the middle of nowhere so getting a signal (even with Mike’s MiFi) was impossible. So, we figured we would have to drive somewhere to get a signal — but, right before we left Mike found that they have WiFi available at the contact station. Another nice surprise — Minnesota does not have different resident vs. non-resident prices, it is one fee for the sticker. With that purchased we were ready to start hiking.
Given the late evening find of this park, the plans and research for the trails were made a little hastily. We usually try to get at least 10 miles in, but Mike only planned for about 7 and figured we could wing the rest of it (insert dramatic foreshadowing music). The first trail was to be the longer one — the Dakota Trail. This was listed as 4.2 miles and “steep and hilly with over 200 stairs”. We left the parking lot and…..found the 200 stairs!!! We went up, up, up, and more up. It was somewhere around 150 feet up in the first 1/5th of a mile. The last part of the stairs was more of a ladder — straight up the rock face to Coyote Point. We were both out of breath; it was a incredible ascent. The view from the top was awesome — as usual Mike is much more about the climb and Tammy is much more about the view. This is mainly due to Mike’s foolish (to him) fear of heights. It is not really even a fear of heights, it is much more a fear of drop-offs/cliffs/etc. Anything where you look out and you can see hundreds of feet below you with what appearsto be nothing in between you and the drop off. We’ve hiked along a lot of very steep hills that are high up and he is completely unbothered because you can see the trees, brush, rocks, etc. that descend down the hill. All this is to say that Tammy goes to the edge and takes pictures while Mike stays back (usually hanging onto a nearby friendly tree or rock) and tells her (over and over) BE CAREFUL! Mike also doesn’t want to dawdle on these overlooks and wants to get hiking again. However, as we left Coyote Point he was in for a shock — you walk along a ridgeline that is maybe two feet wide with sheer drop-offs on either side of you. Mike just concentrated on picking his feet up and putting them down and, as you can imagine, he survived.
The next mile or so of the Dakota Trail was absolutely breathtaking! Views of the Whitewater River and little rustic bridges that cross it were had at almost every turn. The trail, much to Mike’s chagrin, hugs the edge of the bluff. Sometimes the trail would go right along the edge and sometimes it would wander back into the trees a little bit. We knew the trail came to a point up ahead where we crossed the river, but we were still very high up. That means a downhill hike — and a significant downhill too. Tammy’s knees hate downhill hiking and in turn she dislikes it — but she is a trooper and may complain a little bit (nowhere near as much as Mike does over the heights), but her pain is physical, Mike’s is mental. The bluff got more and more narrow until we were essentially hiking down a stone ridge-line. Nowhere near as narrow as it was getting off Coyote Point, but it was quite steep and there were no steps.
We now found ourselves in the river valley with high bluffs on either side of us. It was hard to imagine that we had just hiked up and down those steep bluffs. But we were not done yet — we now had to go up the bluff on the other side of the river. And we also had to get across the river. There was no bridge — rather there were very large stepping stones placed across the river. Mike found the crossing to be a piece of cake, but Tammy didn’t like it. Mike’s long legs makes the steps easy, Tammy’s shorter legs had a difficult time and she was uneasy with the water rushing by just inches below her feet. Crazy how these things affect people completely differently. Nonetheless we made it across with neither of us falling in — and we started the ascent on the other side. It should be noted that the trails are NOT very well marked. The map shows generally where the trails are, but the trails have no signs on them where they branch off. Usually this is not that big of a problem, but here the trails were very winding and changed directions quickly so it was easy to get turned around as to which way you were going.
We quickly found ourselves at Signal Point (well, relatively quickly anyway) and looking back across the river valley to the bluff where we had hiked along on the other side. What a view!! The trail continues on along the bluff to Eagle Point where the map shows a hairpin turn back along the other side of the bluff — again you would think this would be easy to find, but it was not. While coming along the one side we could see a trail on the other side of the bluff. Tammy asked if we were on the right trail — Mike’s response “I sure hope so, because I do not want to walk along that one that is right on the edge of that cliff”. No time to even insert dramatic foreshadowing music because there was the hair-pin turn and we were on that trail on the edge of the cliff…ugh. We hiked for about 74 miles on that trail (ok, Mike says it seemed like 74 miles) before we made it down into the trees where Mike’s anxieties could ease a bit. Back down the bluff we were going. Mike glanced at his watch and saw that we had barely gone 3 miles by this point in time — WOW! It was almost 2.5 hours into the hike. Up and down is slow going — and we were not done yet.
Once at the bottom of the hill we had to cross MN Highway 74 that bisects the park and…you guessed it…began to climb yet again. This time it was a little easier climbing, at least in terms of steepness — but it was a little harder because of all the hills we had done so far. We also did not have to climb all the way to the top of the bluff!! We finally started descending on the other side of the bluff and made our way down to a small parking lot by South Picnic area — BOY was it crowded!! People everywhere. And the bathrooms were open! At this point in time the bathrooms at Wisconsin state parks were still all locked up. We made our way back to the van, our portable toilet and most importantly water bottles!!
After a short break, we were going to walk the easy trail down along the Trout Run Creek — this was going to be an easy out-and-back trail before we started heading UP again. This trail was right off the parking lot for the overrun picnic area, so it quickly became apparent that the trail was going to be packed with people. Groups of 4 or more people were all the way along the trail making social distancing on the trail almost impossible. The trail up to Inspiration Point was along this trail and we quickly decided to abandon the easy creek trail and head UP. This was quite a climb — as you near the top you encounter a set of very narrow steps — it would be almost impossible to pass someone under normal circumstances, but with social distancing it would BE impossible. Luckily we did not encounter anyone on the steps and just climbed and climbed. Finally at the top we were provided with quite the view!! There were already several sets of people out on the point so we did not go out there (whew, no height issues for Mike). As we were there we saw a dad with two little girls (still in pajamas!) who was trying to take their picture. Mike offered to get a picture of all three with the beautiful background and they were very thankful. They were also kind of lost. They were only about half a mile from the picnic area, just down the steps and a little down the hill. Mike got him straightened out and the dad was happy that he didn’t have to go the entire way back they had come to get there. Apparently he was giving mom a break and had the kids out hiking! Great dad!! Two women overheard Mike giving the dad directions and asked him about the trails and where they had to go, of course, he got them going in the right direction too. Funny, less than 18 hours ago we had no idea this park even existed and now here is Mike giving people directions on where the trails go.
The next highlight after Inspiration Point is Chimney Rock — this about a half mile hike along the ridge. While it was only half a mile, we encountered about 1000 people (ok, maybe an exaggeration….but just a little). We can never figure out either why it is always us who step to the side of the trail to let others pass — oh well, Wisconsin nice! Although it happens in Wisconsin all the time too. It was decided right then and there that we were done!! Make it back to the car and go! But we had to get to Chimney Rock first — that was quite a sight, again it is hiking along some fairly steep bluffs, and going uphill, but smaller than earlier in the day. As we started making our way down the hill we encountered a group of 3 younger gentlemen. They all had camo backpacks on and had a variety of accents (Southern, Texas and what sounded like New York). It became obvious they were military. When we passed them they too asked Mike about the park and the river below looking a little dried up. When we were done talking to them and started walking away they one said “thank you for the information sir”, after Mike said a quick “you’re welcome” he added on “…and ma’am”. Yep, definitely military. As our old joints slowly had us making our way down the steps, this group of three men quickly caught up and we stepped aside to let them pass just as we stepped on a step that was not solid. We were able to warn them about it and once again we got the “sir” and “ma’am” treatment. Once at the bottom of the hill we decided to make a little detour on the way to the car and head back to the group campsite to see what they were like, and they were very nice! We were quickly back at the van and getting ready to leave for #SupperClubSaturday.
Our #SupperClubSaturday destination this week was Vino Over the Valley in Arcadia, WI. We have been to their sister restaurant Vino in the Valley in Maiden Rock, WI many times so we were anxious to try this one out — one thing we like is good wine and good food!! We made our way down through Winona, MN and across the river. We thought we were going to be going through Fountain City, but Google had other plans and directed us a different route — which we did not know existed and was really pretty! One thing we saw on the way there was dragon flies!!! Lots and lots and LOTS of dragon flies. They were everywhere! We were going to be arriving at the restaurant about 1 minute after they opened — we thought no way would we have any problems getting in. However, as we rounded the last corner of WI Highway 95 we saw….motorcycles, seemingly an endless number of motorcycles. We had forgotten that right next door to Vino over the Valley was a bar, apparently a biker bar, called “Larry’s Lookout“. This bar is owned by the same person who owns the two ‘Vino” restaurants. It was almost impossible to find a parking spot — there were motorcycles parked all over the lot blocking ways to get to the restaurant. Mike was lucky to find a spot right next to the bar that was open, otherwise it would have been parking on the highway.
Once we made it to the restaurant there was a sign that said they were seating people socially distanced so there might be a little longer wait than usual. We weren’t worried there was almost no one else there. We were seated at a table with a gorgeous view of the valley and thousands of dragon flies and several bluebirds.
We ordered a bottle of wine (duh!) and two appetizers: a cheese and meat sampler and our favorite the stuffed mushrooms. The stuffed mushrooms were good, although just barely warm. The cheese and meat sampler was good, but not anything “exotic” that you might think of at a higher end restaurant and we were not told what the meats or cheeses were.
Unfortunately we ran out wine during the appetizers so we had to order another bottle — shucks! Thankfully Tammy drank more of the second bottle than Mike! Our dinners were both salads — Black and Bleu Steak for Tammy and the Italian Cobb for Mike. They were both good, but Mike’s had so much lettuce on it they must have thought he had a couple of pet rabbits at home that needed to be fed. But Mike at all the “good stuff” out of the salad and we took the extra lettuce home. We noticed that as it got later and the restaurant started to get busier that their version of “socially distanced seating” was not what we would really expect. Rather than seating people at every other table, they just sat people on one half of the restaurant (the side with the gorgeous view). So, by the time we left there were people at the table immediately behind each of us. Not much distancing going on there. 😦
It was time to leave. A very uneventful drive and home early again on another exciting #SplorinSaturday!!!
Time to get out of the “Splorin’tine zone”. The Wisconsin State Supreme Court struck down the #SaferAtHome orders of the Wisconsin Governor. Like it or not, this means that some thing were going to start opening back up. Hopefully with care and proper procedures put in place, some people will be able to get their livelihoods back and we will hopefully be able to get back to some semblance of #SplorinSaturdays. We will continue to go splorin’ early in the day and avoid places that may get crowded, be as self contained as we can, only stop for gas if needed and practice social distancing. This is how we will move forward.
Our next destination was Governor Thompson State Park in Crivitz, WI — a LONG 3.5 hours away. The last time we were in Crivitz was for our dear friends, Colleen and Greg’s, wedding 30 yrs ago and we certainly didn’t have time for splorin’ then. But, armed with our trusty portable toilet we were up for the challenge!! Mike did a lot of researching and found two restaurants that we felt comfortable stopping at for breakfast and #SupperClubSaturday.
Two Angels Family Restaurant in Antigo, WI was our breakfast stop. Mike read that they were taking precautions for proper distancing and cleaning so we felt comfortable stopping there to eat. It was glorious. Walking in there were few people there and they were all spread out across the dining room. There were THREE groups of older gentleman coffee klatches going on. We think they have missed being able to do this too!!! Breakfast was typical “meat” omelet for Mike and “veggie” omelet for Tammy — it was awesome!!! Our waitress was really funny — she commented on how things had changed and they really were glad to open back up or they would not be able to remain open. Tammy was in angel heaven — they were displayed everywhere. She really wanted to ask about the history of the place but decided that lingering and vistiting still probably should wait for awhile.
We were off for the state park. Arriving we were surprised to see someone in the office, but the signs were still up saying everything was closed. We made our way to the first parking lot to get ready for our first real Splorin’ in a long time.
Since were are getting further into Spring we knew bugs would be an issue and we had heard this park was especially brutal with wood ticks. We already had our Picaridin from last year and Mike found out that Permethrin was very effective against ticks. This is a chemical that you spray on your clothes and it kills ticks for up to six weeks (even through clothes’ laundering). So, we got some and Mike treated our hiking clothes with it the night before. After our entire day hiking we found TWO ticks. One on Mike’s leg that was dead and one on his sock and it didn’t look to healthy. Other people at the park mentioned multiple ticks in much less time than we were there. So — whether it was the Picaridin or Permethrin we don’t care — it kept the bugs away!!! And not one mosquito bite either! We have learned a lot in a year.
Now, back to the actual hiking. We started on the Otter Trail and found the trails to be very wide and made of long grass — we see where the ticks would come from.
We encountered quite a few flowers along the way (it is Spring after all 😉 ).
Tammy loves her Trilliums!!!
As we made our way along and almost to the campground, it finally happened. Mike was busy looking off into the trees for deer or a fawn and he hears Tammy whisper those three magical words: “There’s a bear!”. Up the trail, about 50 yards away and right in the middle of our path is a smallish black bear. It was probably a yearling — way too big to be a cub from this year, but certainly not full grown. It ran up the trail 5 or 10 yards and then darted off into the trees. We made our way up to where it went into the woods but Mike couldn’t find where it went at all. (believe me he tried!) No picture of it, but I guess that will be our next challenge: to see and get a picture of a bear!
We continued on the trail and there were so many pretty views that it was mesmerizing. So after our first hike of 7.74 miles we saw 0 humans and 1 bear — it was going to be a good day!!!!
Near the tail end of the first hike we encountered a location where there were thousands of white birch trees. It was strange when seen from one point of view it looked like water through the trees. It wasn’t until we got along side this stand of Birch trees that we could see the “forest for the trees”.
Whew, 7.74 miles is a long hike. We didn’t bring water with us on the hike (even though Tammy keeps saying we should) so we sucked quite a bit down once we got back to the car. Then we were ready to take on the rest of the park. We drove to the boat landing and found a secluded spot so we would be out of the way when we returned to get ready for the return of #SupperclubSaturday.
The next set of trails had the first real hills of the day. Along these trails we saw even more ferns and some that were pretty photogenic.
As we neared the end of the hike we found an “overlook”. Having been down many overlooks that were completely grown over and you couldn’t see anything it was nice to see that this overlook of “Thunder Mountain” was open so you could see it very clearly above the lake.
The state park was gorgeous and we would love to go back and perhaps camp there someday — the campgrounds look awesome!! But we are now ready to move on to the feature of the day that we were so looking for to.
#SupperClubSaturday
It has been two months since we were able to partake in this portion of the day. Mike found a supper club in Antigo that was open: Swartzendruber’s Supper Club. This was EXACTLY the kind of place that we wanted to return to once we could. Mike called to get reservations just in case and the lady taking the reservation said we could get there whatever time we wanted and could have a drink at the bar until the dining room was open and ready to take seating.
When we arrived, there was only one other car in the parking lot. Mike was hoping for a couple — not too many, but more than what may end up just being us inside. When we went inside there was an elderly couple sitting at the bar and a very delightful bartender greeting us. We grabbed a couple of “socially distanced” bar stools and ordered a drink. Why was this our perfect place? We had been there about five minutes and the phone rang. The bar tender picked up and said “Hi Grandpa!!”, turned out the call was for her dad — the owner of the supper club. So — perfect family run business. We had a very delightful conversation with the bartender where she explained how they had the difficult choice to open or stay just doing take out meals. It was her comment of “just doing take-out and delivery doesn’t pay the bills” that really kind of struck home.
They were doing things “right:” barstools were spaced out. Tables were spaced out and when others were seated it was very deliberate to keep that space. Our server had gloves on when she was serving items to our table. Salt and pepper shakers were brought to each table not just still sitting there, etc. Overall they seemed to be being very cautious and concerned with our health and safety, as well as their own. We were glad to be there to help support this local place
Now the food — it was WONDROUS!!! While at the bar we heard that the elderly couple order mushrooms as an appetizer but we did not see them on the menu. So we asked our waitress and she said they could make some up for us if we wanted — yes, thank you very much, we did. They were fabulous – beer battered, but not overly greasy or overly battered. Unfortunately they did not have the scallops Tammy wanted, so she got the tenderloin with mushrooms and onions, but Mike was able to get his prime rib!!! Both were amazingly good. It was one of the better prime ribs that Mike has had. That could be because of two months of going without, but he thinks it still ranked up there very high on the list.
We then had an enjoyable 2.5 hour drive home where we saw deer, turkeys and some Amish people!
A VERY GOOD SPLORIN’ SATURDAY!!! Let’s hope this continues.
Since getting the portable toilet, we decided we didn’t need to remain super close to home; we can be completely independent of any facilities (except stopping to get gas). So we wanted to try to tackle the last few parks we need to check off our list before our big finish with four State parks in Door County.
This weeks adventures were to take us to two state parks: New Glarus Woods State Park and Cross Plains State Park. These are two that we have tried to work into our plans for a while, but since they both are sufficiently away from other parks, we never were able to make them work. But, surprisingly, they ended up being a couple of our favorite parks.
Once again upon arrival we used our “facilities” in a completely empty parking lot — it was lovely. We then immediately headed out before the crowds got too big. With so much being cancelled right now, it is clear more people are out splorin’ just like we are.
Spring is FINALLY coming in to full bloom and we came across some beautiful plants and flowers almost immediately.
At first Mike thought that was a pitcher plant, but it turns out it is a Jack-in-a-Pulit. These were everywhere!! Once we saw 1, 2, 10, we saw hundreds of them! We quickly made our way out into the plains where we saw a Bison!
Ok, so it was a fake Bison, but….we were quickly back out of the plains onto the trail.
This was a gorgeous walk in the woods. As we went along Mike suddenly stopped as he saw a bright red bird. It was a Scarlet Tanager!! All we can say is WOW! It was beautiful.
Along this trail on the South side of the park you exit the woods into an expansive prairie area that has a lovely little stream flowing through the middle of it.
As we made our way back to the car, we passed an area where we saw probably 10 or 20 goldfinches flitting back and forth across the trail. We also noticed a couple of the birds were completely yellow (unlike the goldfinches that are black and gold) and they were not has brightly colored as the goldfinches. Mike has a great “bird memory” and can usually find out what we saw with a little help from Mr. Google. It turns out they were American Yellow Warblers. Too bad we could not get a picture of them. Maybe next time.
We were then off to Cross Plains State Park. There isn’t a sign for this park, in fact, there isn’t really a parking lot or welcome center or… anything. This was a hard park for Mike to plan. It is a newer state park and there are no real maps available and it is a combination of county, state and federal lands, all kind of bunched together. The Ice Age Trail runs through it as well. But, we were just going to wing it with the information that Mike was able to get together. (The Wisconsin State Parks Facebook page is a great source of information if you can disregard all the people complaining about bathrooms and campgrounds being closed.) We also located a map on one of the signs on the road by the park and probably should have taken a picture of it, but didn’t. Once again — off we went. It looked like we were going to primarily be circling a couple of fields. It was a beautiful walk.
We saw a Baltimore Oriole along the way — we have those in our backyard, but Mike was surprised that we would see one “in the wild”. 😉 We also saw a couple of Bluebirds — they are always pretty to see. Pictures of birds are hard to capture with your phone we are finding.We made our way back to the car via the Ice Age Trail.
We now were going to try the trails on the other side of the road — there were no maps, but there are trails visible from the road, so we decided to just wing it. Not something really easy for Mike the Planner, but he was not “too” uptight about it. This was a very enjoyable surprise!!! We thought the trail was going to be similar to the other side and just loop a big field. But the trail quickly cuts off into the woods and you are walking on the top of a very large ravine. Tammy was even able to get Mike “sort of” close to the edge of this beautiful area — but, note he is holding on to the tree.
When you get to one portion you have a beautiful view of an iconic Wisconsin dairy farm. We also stumbled upon another bird we had never seen before: the Eastern Towhee.
The trail stayed right at the top of a hill — we came upon one, smaller trail that went down the hill but we were too chicken to take it and see where it led. I mean, that is way too much of a deviation from a “plan.” As we made our way back to the car we came across a Shagbark Hickory bloom. We had seen many of these throughout our hike, but this seemed like a perfect specimen. Plants and birds are becoming our “thing.” Who would have thought?
We had plans of doing #TakeOutSupperClubSaturday from one of our favorite restaurants in Eau Claire and just do a whole selection of appetizers. But, Tammy found out that one of the appetizers that she really wanted was no longer on the menu. So changing up the plan again, we found a real supper club enroute and ordered food and stopped at a park to eat al fresco at a picnic table. First we had to make a pitstop at a Walmart to get some plates and silverware (and maybe a bottle of wine).
Since we weren’t headed straight home, we had some time before the supper club opened so we decided to try yet another place to go hiking. Mike kind of picked blindly one that was somewhere close to Fannie’s Supper Club. Boy, he can pick them!!! We ended up going to Castle Mound Pine Forest just outside Black River Falls, WI. We really had no idea what this park was about — we had driven right past it once, but didn’t bother looking into it. Turns out we should have!!!
It was a really cool little park where the main attraction is a very large granite mound (Castle Mound) that rises well above the pine forest floor. The trail loops you around the mound and then you can climb up to the top for some pretty awe inspiring scenes.
It was a short little loop but lots of places to explore and climb among the rocks. The ladder to the top of the rock observation deck was closed (although the sign had been torn down and thrown to the side) but I am not really sure either of us would have been able to do it any way. We did encounter a couple of other hikers on this trail that were most certainly enjoying themselves. (the smell was undeniable and reminiscent of our trip to NYC in February.) We were VERY glad we found this place — it is definitely worth a stop!!!
We then ordered our food from the supper club, (no prime rib and no scallops and they forgot our salads — but beggers can’t be choosers) picked it up and ate at the Highgrounds Veterans Memorial Park. It was a little chilly, and very windy, so we ate quickly and then made our way home.
Almost #SupperClubSaturday — we are getting close!!!
The week before we headed to Mirror Lake State Park new guidelines came out for Wisconsin State Parks — all would be open again (still no camping though) with revised hours, you had to have an annual pass again, and ALL bathrooms were closed. (even the pit toilets) Now Tammy’s small bladder, weakened by birthing 4 children, kind of dictates the need for several bathroom stops over the course of a Splorin’ trip. We still wanted/needed to enjoy the parks so we purchased a portable toilet that we could use in the back our our van!!! While it sounds kind of icky, it works wonderful and in Tammy’s words – it’s a game changer!! So, Mirror Lake State Park was our first chance to take it for a spin (so to speak).
We utilized the services of the portable toilet as soon as we parked. Worked great. Tammy was concerned about people being able to see in, but unless they come right up to the tinted windows and cup their hands on the window they are not going to see anything. Having sufficiently relieved ourselves, it was time to start hiking!!
We headed off for the Northwest Trails. This led us right by the first glimpse of Mirror Lake.
Many beautiful weeds, flowers and ferns along this trail.
Some of you will notice I included Garlic Mustard in this as “beautiful” even though it is an invasive species. Unfortunately it is a beautiful invasive species… 😦 We have learned much about garlic mustard by reading the Wisconsin State Parks Facebook page.
We made it back to the car and took a quick potty break. 🙂 🙂 Then started on the second half of the park. We were to make our way up the East side of the park to and past the Ishnala Supper Club.
Part of this trail ended up taking us right past the freeway in an open meadow and all the noise that comes with it. This actually became a blessing for us. Mike decided that we should walk back up the driveway to the supper club and make our way back down along the other side of the trail. It turns out that the other side of the trail took you right down a beautiful ravine all the way to Mirror Lake at the end.
It was a very beautiful walk right down the valley the whole way. As we made our way back up to Echo Rock, you get a beautiful view of the supper club across a narrow inlet. So we get our Supper Club “fix” any way we can.
About this time, the park started becoming more and more crowded. Groups of people hiking down the trails, etc. Mike doesn’t like groups of people in the parks in general now with “social distancing” we both dislike seeing lots of people who just ignore this and won’t even step aside on the trail.
We had one more stop to make before we were done — Pulpit Rock Trail. This was a very short one-way out and back hike. Unfortunately when you get to the end you cannot really see Pulpit Rock (because you are standing on top of it). You get a pretty view of Mirror Lake, but we already had quite a few of those.
We made our way back to the car and back home again. Still no #SupperClubSaturday.
Expanding our traveling a little further this week, but still staying close enough to home to feel comfortable. It was our “Splorin’versary”. Unfortunately it had to happen during this time when we could not stop and enjoy breakfast or #SupperClubSaturday, but none-the-less we decided we wanted to take on Interstate State Park — which was the location of the first place we did #SplorinSaturday a year ago. We were hoping we would not lose a shoe to the mud like we did last year, but whatever happens, this park will always be meaningful to us as it was one that we spent a lot of time at while we were in high school and college.
At this time state parks in Wisconsin were still “free”; since this park is right on the Minnesota border, we knew that it would be packed, so we wanted to again get there early get it done as quickly as possible. Mike’s plan was to do basically the same hike we did last year, but with a couple of changes of course.
We started by parking in the Ice Age Center parking lot and begin hiking on the Skyline Trail. This was the trail where Tammy lost a tennis shoe to the mud last year. We quickly found out why we had such difficult time last year. There was a branch in the trail that we missed last year. A cross-country ski trail went one direction while the hiking trail went the other. The difference was that the cross-country ski trail (what we followed last year) went along a hillside that had lots and lots of springs, so it made the ground and trail very wet and sloppy. In the winter with snow on top that is no problem — but in the Spring it is quite messy. This year we opted for the hiking trail portion.
Right after we made the turn onto the hiking trail, Mike spotted a deer about 50 yards off the trail. It was looking right at us, but was very unimpressed by us. It kept eating and meandering. It actually followed us parallel on the trail for about half a mile. It was crazy to see it just going right along with us. Right after seeing the deer we entered the “moss area”. Everything was covered with beautiful green moss.
We then came to the point where we go down the hill to the St. Croix River and a peaceful stream that flowed through the valley on its way there too.
We then passed through the valley of frogs — last year the frogs were so loud you almost could not hear yourself think. Today they were loud but nowhere near that loud. Here is also where we took a detour from what we did last year. We went up on Eagle Peak Trail. This is the highest point in the park. Last year I think the climb up would have come close to killing us, this year we just plodded right to the top. It had an amazing view from the top.
We then made our way back down and along the Silverbrook Trail. This trail takes you out to a very pretty waterfall. Right off the waterfall is a little trail that leads you through the middle of a marsh like area where the water flows to get to the waterfall. Last year we got pretty wet starting to walk across this, but we never made it all the way. This year it was a little less wet so we decided to give it a shot. We made it across mostly dry — and by mostly dry I mean that Mike had one dry boot and Tammy’s knees were still dry. But — on the other side we found a trail leading off the marsh. Thinking maybe it just looped around the marsh we started down it. It quickly became apparent this was not going to loop back around; it was a very nice walk heading toward the back corner of the state park.
Afer about 3/4 of a mile, Mike noticed a little trail leading off to the side and said he thought he could hear water trickling. Going down that path and over a little hill revealed a HUGE ravine with a tiny little tickle of water entering it. This was a massive ravine that obviously led down to the river. We explored around the waterfall for a little be and started down the trail again only to find the trail went right up to the edge of the ravine. There were some great views of the rocks and trees on the side of the ravine.
Tammy found where the trail led off of the ravine and seemed to be heading back. She was right and we soon were back near the waterfall. It turns out that this trail is not on the Summer map of the park as it would typically be too wet to cross that marsh. But it could easily be snowshoed as the ground would be frozen.
We were now going to make our way back to the car via the Lake o’ the Dalles and Meadow Valley Trail. As we made our way to the Lake o’ the Dalles we started seeing more and more and more people. Cars everywhere. Parking lots completely full. People not observing proper social distancing at all. We quickly decided it was time to make it to the car and head out. The Meadow View trail was flooded similar to what it was last year — not quite as bad but the trail was still under six inches of water. We had to work our way around it on the rocks on the side.
The last big climb up and through the rocks was nowhere near as difficult as last year. Last year Tammy had to take a five minute break at the top, this year she just powered right on through all the way to the car. Being in better shape is a beautiful thing!!!
We did take the van back down to the river to play some cribbage, but didn’t stay too long. We were home in time to have dinner with the kids and Tammy needed to finish Carrie’s birthday surprise for the next day. Supperclub Saturday is on hold for yet another week.
We enjoyed the Black River State Forest so much last week we decided to go there two weeks in a row. There was a whole other half of the park that we had not explored. So, 8AM we were in the same parking lot as last week (although this time one other car beat us). This should be a lot less hills than last week as these trails were not rated as “difficult” (you know what kind of music is playing by now…).
This time we were going to tackle the Smrekar Trails. Only one of these was listed at “diffiult” — the Ridge Trail. So we took off from the parking lot intent on getting to that trail as quickly as possible and then coasting the rest of the morning. About half a mile off the parking lot we came to a big “crossroads” of two trails. Usually Mike knows exactly where we are going and where the trails intersect, but this one had him flummoxed. It was not on the map — to this day Mike still has no idea what the “other” trail was (or if it was a maintenance road), but he managed to keep us on the correct trail that led us to the Ridge Trail. On the way to that trail we encountered some pretty amazing scenery.
As soon as we turned onto the Ridge Trail we began to climb. We were definitely climbing to the top of the ridge and we were not stopping…the last 100 feet were seemingly straight up, some of the steepest trail we’ve climbed (outside of Wildcat Mountain where we climbed a hill that turned out not to be part of the trail).
When you are walking along that ridge, you feel every little bit of wind — and it was WINDY – our hats were almost blown off a couple of times. Thanks to quick hand grabs we kept them on. And, like last week, the views were amazing and simply breathtaking.
One thing we saw on these trails that we didn’t see last week was rocks. There were a lot of rocks.
We finally made our way down off the ridge and took a break at the Smrekar picnic area. The rest of the walk back to the car was much more level except for the last 1/4 mile before the lot. Tammy may have let a bad word slip on that one, but it was quiet and done under her breath.
We will definitely be back to the Black River State Forest!!!!
Not wanting to let any snow melt under our feet — we headed off bright and early, amazingly enough, right on time at 6:58AM on Saturday morning. Why 6:58AM? So we can get on the road before the 
Splorin' Saturday 