Day 63: Connecting Route, Wild Rivers (Tuscobia) Segment, Barron County

Day 63: Sunday May 9th, 2021

Total Miles covered for the day: 5.6

Location 1: Connecting Route between the Bear Lake segment in the west and the Wild Rivers (Tuscobia) Segment to the east. 
3.0 miles of trail covered

First of all, I don't want anyone pulling out their old trail maps and trying to find the Wild Rivers Segment. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't exist, and never has. It's not like the Blueberry Segment in Washburn County that got swallowed up by a neighboring giant, or the Railroad Segment in Langlade County that was essentially abandoned. The Wild Rivers Segment is a figment of my imagination that in my opinion should exist. More on that later.

This morning we woke up to temperatures a little warmer than yesterday, but still hand-rubbing cold for knocking down camp. There was no way we were going to hang around our campsite at Eagle Point in Cumberland, no matter how nice it was, or how friendly our camp host was. We wanted to get going and make some miles before we went home. 

We had actually rented the campsite for another day to give us the ability to leave our stuff there, then come back later when it was hopefully dry and pack it all up. Instead, in my typical fashion, I just tore everything down and stuffed it in the van in a crumpled heap, figuring I'd just have to open it all back up again when I got home and dry it thoroughly. To my surprise, Theresa went along with the plan. 

We were packed up and out of camp by 9:00 am, and managed to get our cars in place for our first walk of the day by 9:48 am, temperature a still-chilly 49 degrees. But the sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day for a hike. 

Knowing that we would want to shed clothing as the day progressed, we parked our target vehicle at the eastern parking area on Cty VV, then put our launch vehicle about halfway to Haugen at a small parking area for wetland viewers. 

A sign there tells the visitor about the "large, open sedge meadow" directly across the road to the north, and the types of birds one might expect to see there. We saw neither the Yellow Rail nor the LeConte's Sparrow, but we saw plenty of other birds as we walked along the nice, sunny paved road. 

One of the best things about hiking connecting routes is that we can walk side-by-side. That almost never happens on the trail. 

And there was more than one sedge meadow to be seen along the road. Here is a smaller one we saw just before we got to the car.

We didn't see much traffic, but we were passed coming and going by an enthusiastic morning power-walker. We reached the car at 10:30 with almost no story to tell. 

The second half of this walk started all the way in town. We drove to the parking area at the intersection of Main Street and 3rd Street, so we could walk through town and then out County VV to our car. 

We started at 10:40 am, and the temperature had climbed all the way to 52 degrees. Not exactly warm yet, but not too bad either. 

Haugen is an interesting place to visit, though there didn't appear to be much in the way of commerce. However, we did pass a large relic of a Historical Museum, itself a proud monument to better days. 

We also passed by the Bohemian National Cemetery on the way out of town. The cemetery boasts an odd slogan at the roadside. 

That gave us something to think about as we walked. 

Later on we spotted a Purple Martin. 

We reached the car at 11:38 am, roughly an hour after we started, and the temp had risen once again to 55 degrees. 

Location 2: The imaginary Wild Rivers Segment, between the intersection of Main Street and 3rd Street in downtown Haugen on the north and the Tuscobia Segment to the south. 

2.6 miles of trail covered.

OK, so here's the deal. The Ice Age Trail is not widely renowned for making things easy on hikers. Their selection of walking routes seldom opts for a paved road when there's a perfectly good muddy or gravelly path to choose. So when we started hiking on this next piece of what is officially a Connecting Route at 12:45, with the temperature now a very sunny 55 degrees, we assumed we would have to walk the gravel bike/ATV trail. All that day, and in all the time that has passed since I believed that the official recommended route was along that gravel path. 

Today, as I sit and write this, I zoomed in a little closer on the official hiker's resource map, and saw that no, for the first 1.2 miles or so, the recommended route is actually directly on the beautifully paved Main Street, not on that nasty, hot gravel. 

We are not the first hikers to make that mistake. 

So instead of a typical connecting route, we instead walked the entire 2.6  miles on the gravel "Wild Rivers State Trail", which is why I have decided that what we really did was hike the Wild Rivers Segment. And why not? There are certainly shorter segments out there. I'm claiming this as trail miles. 

First we drove down to a spot about halfway down the segment, parked our car and walked back to Haugen, ending at 1:26 pm. The temperature was now 57 degrees, and the sun was beating on our necks. 

Then repeated the process with another stint from the west end of the Tuscobia Segment to our car somewhere up on Main Street, starting at 1:46 pm and ending at 2:32 pm with the thermometer now up to 58 degrees. Tolerable, but hot in the direct sun. 

The whole hike looked and felt like the first picture above, but there were diversions. 

Bridge View

View from the Tuscobia end

A lake way down there...

We didn't make use of the site, but here's a link to Barron County Campgrounds:

https://parks.co.barron.wi.us/parks/camping/ 

One other thing that was interesting along this piece of trail was a dog pack that took a disconcerting interest in following us down the trail and keeping us away from their territory. It was a mongrel pack, with one or two large animals and several small ones, any one of which seemed willing to take a bite out of just for fun. I finally had to act in a fairly dominant fashion, telling them to go home, which they eventually did. 

One other thing to note - the Mule drivers were very polite. Mules are the popular new love child offspring of a traditional ATV and a dune buggy, complete with roll bars, where two or more riders can pile in and go muddin' together. But along this trail, where the dust was flying and there was no speed limit for these machines, they courteously slowed down to a crawl as they passed us, waved politely, then sped on their way after they had passed. 

Maybe there is hope for the world after all.

Running Total: 437.4 miles of trail covered; 37.5 miles ‘extra’ hiking/biking. End of Day 63.

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