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bike42 · 3 years

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Friday, July 9 - Sunday, July 11, 2021

Happy to be back out on the Ice Age Trail!! We’re hiking without Gary as he had to fly back to New Jersey for a funeral today, but with luck will see him tomorrow. Our rendezvous point was only 70 minutes from our house so it was nice to be able to leave just after 6 AM and get to the meeting point before 7:30 AM. Even though we’d just seen everyone, we were excited to be together again. Jeff had to gently shepherd us into the cars, reminding us that we had all day to talk and swap stories and we should get going.

We left two cars at our meeting point and got into Dan and Tam‘s SUV and drove to the start of the Deerwood Segment, where we left off on that rainy Sunday just a few weeks ago. We were delighted to find it looking much different today - it’s a perfect Wisconsin summer day. It was about 60° when we started out, with plenty of sunshine.

We hiked 10 miles before a lunch break - wonderful segments (Deerfield, Bohn Lake and Greenwood) through pine trees, around beautiful lakes, with short road walks mixed in. This combination allows us to cover pretty good ground because we can really book it on the road walk and stop and enjoy when we’re in the woods a little bit more. We took two different snack breaks this morning which was really helpful because I was used to having a long drive to drink my coffee and gradually eat my breakfast. I brought along my small thermos of coffee and that was really great to wash down a cliff bar with hot coffee. Another unusual factor is that we encountered several couples – still so strange to see others on these amazing trails. One couple was out with their 11-year-old dog, and said they walk this 4-mile loop every day. The other couple had three grandchildren along and they had buckets and were just going blackberry picking. We chatted with them for a while and Tam told the kids to pick enough berries so grandma could make a blackberry cobbler. Grandma said “shut up,” which gave us all a great laugh and reminded us of Jen at the bar a couple weeks ago who told a customer “Shut up and give me all your money.” In addition to a couple snack breaks I ate a lot of ripe blackberries along the trail (yum) and found myself hoping that the café at lunchtime will have blackberry cobbler.

The summer wildflowers are really starting to come in to full bloom which attracts a myriad of different kind of butterflies, including many monarchs. As we were walking through the pine forest, it was very quiet due to the sand and pine needles underfoot and we heard buzzing in the trees. While we couldn’t see a beehive, we’re pretty sure that’s what we heard. We walked probably another hundred feet and had the same thing. It was really cool and it made me think made me think of Winnie the Pooh and the way he would sing to the honeybees and try to float along with a balloon to get the honey from the hive in the tree!

After 10 miles we came out through the woods right where our cars were – always, thankful for that! We climbed into the two cars and drove about 7 miles to Coloma where we stopped at the Red Hill café for lunch (except we all had omelets). This is an Amish area and the café served an Amish wheat bread with our omelets, the best bread I’ve had in a long time! One of their specials of the day was a ‘double caramel chocolate roll muffin’ which sounded a bit too decadent, even for me. Like all establishments these days the café was probably short-staffed so it took a long time for us to order and for our food to come, so it was about 2:30p before we shuttled the cars and were back on the trail. With full bellies, it was off to a slow start as we started again down the connecting road.

This afternoon we finished the Greenwood segment had a short road walk and started the Mecan River segment. The area was designated Mecan Springs State Natural Area, and the trail was gorgeous but we didn’t see much of the river, which is always disappointing to me.

We all had several wood-ticks today, but we’re getting used to them and no one seems as freaked out as last year. Other than a few flies, and some intermittent buzz-bys from deer flies, no other bugs – no mosquitoes, which is a bit unbelievable!

At one point the trail today came out into a farm field and there was a fabulous prairie easement between two cornfields and that we were allowed to walk through. We rousted up some sand hill cranes, always majestic to watch them take off and fly away. The prairie flowers were just starting to come into bloom and the view was breathtaking to me. There were spots in the cornfield where the probably original oak trees still stood and rocks were piled up and you could just imagine the settlers clearing the fields and piling up the rocks. And we think we’re working hard out here just slogging along the trail, silly us!

With our dallying, it was nearly 6 o’clock before we got back to the car – 17.5 miles for the day. We had a quick shuttle to pick up the other two cars and soon we were back in Coloma for a bathroom stop at the gas station. Jeff and I picked up root beer floats at the A&W that was attached to the gas station. The other two couples stopped at a restaurant in Coloma for dinner, but Jeff and I decided to head home and tend to our cat. We arrived home about 7:30 PM completely exhausted. I had all I could do to eat a little leftover salad, re-supply my pack for tomorrow run a hot bubble bath and then crawl into bed shortly after nine.

A late-night text from Gary said he was stranded in Charlotte, North Carolina which is pretty far from New Jersey, and further from Wisconsin. On our drive north today, we learned he was now in Detroit, which is closer, but he still wasn’t going to make the hike today. That made us all sad because we’re a little lost without him, but we pressed on anyway. We were all at the rendezvous spot at 8 AM, and we took two cars back to Highway GG in the middle of the Mecan river segment and we were hiking by 8:30 AM, an easy early start.

This part of the Mecon river segment actually paralleled the river, winding around through oak and pine forest, on another absolutely gorgeous Wisconsin summer day. The ladies lagged behind a bit, using my “Picture This” app to identify some of the flowers. We were hiking through an area that had been logged several years before, which was now growing a bunch of pretty flowers and berries most of which are poisonous to humans of course.

Over the past two days, much of the trail had vole or moles that had burrowed trails than intersected under our trails! We were a bit perplexed by the volume, but actually, it made for softer trails. Jeff figured there must be a lot of grubs in the area for them to be eating!

We had a great morning enjoying the hike along the river, stopping once at a bench to take a coffee break and enjoy the scenery. We ended the Mecan River segment and had 2.3-mile road walk. It was warm but we had a nice breeze. We walked through a little village, Richford, which seemed to be primarily an Amish settlement. We walked through the edge of a cemetery with really old tombstones -many of them that you couldn’t even make out the writing anymore. I heard a “clap clap clap” on the pavement behind us, and there was an Amish farmer in a horse and buggy – that was a first for our connecting route walking! Soon we heard another, but that one was a horse pulling a farmer in a really uncomfortable looking cart!

We arrived at the start of Wedde Creek segment, and took another sit-down break – most of us taking off our boots to cool our feet after walking on the hot road. It was a shorter segment, through another gorgeous pine forest and a meadow with lots of wildflowers and butterflies. I lagged behind the group taking photos and just embracing the joy of the day.

After that we had 0.7-mile CR to the Chaffee Creek Segment which will be our last segment for about 40 miles. On this segment we crossed underneath Highway 51 again (we crossed from west to east just south the Tomahawk sometime last winter). For the next couple days will cross underneath Highway 51 back-and-forth a few times until we get to Portage and then will finally turn west and get into familiar territory for us.

We backtracked about a half mile to visit the Rest Stop on I-39/51 – kind of crazy, but always great to have a flush toilet! We hiked through the last of the Chaffee Creek segment, crossing the creek again. We went through another pretty meadow with lots of butterfly activity. We ended up at an official trail parking at a cul de sac, and chatted with a guy there that appeared he was going to do trail maintenance, but actually was doing some work on a friend’s adjacent property. There was trash there that indicated the cul de sac may be a party site. I had a trash bag in my pack, so I pulled it out and started cleaning up the space. Down the road just a bit, there was a branch of a tree nearly blocking the road – the guys got out Jeff’s saw and cleared the road – probably the first time in nearly 600 miles that they cleared a tree on a connecting route!

We had about 1.5 miles CR to get back to Kent’s SUV. We picked up enough trash to fill up TWO bags on our way, always feels good to leave it a little better than we found it. Just don’t get what’s in people’s minds that they just throw trash out the window.

Felt great to be down early. We shuttled back to the Mecan River segment to pick up the other two SUVs, and then to the gas station / A&W in Coloma again. We were home just about 4pm, which was awesome.

For reasons that I don’t understand the Ice Age Trail has a bifurcation, and at the end of our day today we reached that spot of the northern bifurcation. We have opted to take the eastern route which will lead us to Portage, where we’ll walk Levee Road on the south side of the Wisconsin River, south over the Baraboo Bluffs, and we’ll pick up a trail again just around Parfrey’s Glen and that will take us to Devils Lake. The western bifurcation like the eastern in that its mostly CR with very few trail segments. It goes through Baraboo and rejoins the trail at the north side of Devils Lake.

Throughout the hike, we’ve had a lot of Kilimanjaro logistics chatter – its both exciting and anxiety provoking, but I’m so looking forward to that trek – just 9 weeks out now.

Sunday morning, we met at 8AM in Westfield. Shocking to arrive 20 minutes early and find the Knickmeier’s’ already there!! And no Gary, but soon after we arrived, Kent and Lynn pulled in, and Gary soon behind him. Definitely a first! We were all glad to have him back with us today. We left 3 cars in the parking lot of the “Bent Rail” brewpub, where we planned to have lunch. We shuttled north to where we’d left off yesterday, another gorgeous day. I figured we had about 10 miles to lunch, and we were hiking by 8:15am. Even though it was all CR, I managed to pick up a wood-tick during my “quick trip” stop in the woods before we started!

We walked through a lake/resort area, which was odd after days of farms. There were people out running and road cyclists out enjoying the morning – felt kind of normal to us, but different from what we’ve been seeing.

Time passed quickly; seems we never really run out of things to talk about since we’re such a companiable group! It’s also ok for someone to be out front alone when they want to move, or lag behind when they want space. We took a few snack breaks, but mainly just moved. True to form, I was a bit off in the math using the Guthook app to estimate the distance, and it was actually 12 miles. It was warm, but generally with a nice breeze and we arrived at the brew pub about 12:30pm. Like everywhere, they were short staffed – in fact, had a note on their menu asking for patience and offering rewards of free beer for employee referrals. We had a delightful waitress named Tanya, and had some great beer and good food. Patience was required though, and it was after 2P before we were back on the road. Gary and I shuttled his SUV just 3 more miles down the road, and we set off hiking about 2:30PM, and knocked it out in about an hour. Half of it was on a busy County Highway J, so it was great to turn off onto a smaller road, past a few farms and to Gary’s car.

We volunteered to bring Tam and Dan back to their car, which gave us an opportunity to detour back to Coloma and get another A&W float for the drive home. Made for a perfect day! We got a text from Lynn that I-94 had a backup, so we diverted to Portage and took a slower more leisurely

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