Day 89: Connecting Route, Juneau and Adams Counties
Day 89: Friday, August 6th, 2021
Total Miles covered for the day: 18.3
Location: The Western Bifurcation connecting route between County Hwy HH on map 57f-W and the railroad tracks just southwest of Adams, WI on map 55f-W.
18.3 miles of trail covered.
This was day seven of our nine-day adventure, and the weather mostly held out for us. In the end we were stopped both by rain and by a train, but I'll get to that later.
This morning we woke up at camp, more-or-less dry and none the worse for wear after last night's rain. A quick breakfast of coffee, eggs and oatmeal (yes, we ate up more of that pasty glop oatmeal we prepared for the trip) and we were on our way.
Picking up where we left off yesterday, we were in high spirits. We were getting an early start, the temperature was reasonably cool, and it wasn't supposed to rain until much later in the day. After a roughly forty-five minute drive from camp, which thankfully avoided having to drive through Wisconsin Dells again, we were back parked at the intersection of County HH and 55th Street in Juneau County, headed north.
We did bring both cars, but the plan was to drop one off in White Creek and use the bike-and-follow method until we got to that point. Today was going to be another day riding along steeply hilly, dangerous roads, with almost nothing in the way of a shoulder, let alone a biking lane. Theresa took the first stint, as usual.
On the map above, our starting point was on the right side, working our way left. The first leg on HH all the way to Hwy 82 was basically a downhill ride, though of course not as easy as that sloping line would indicate. With me trailing behind, emergency flashers going, middle of the morning on a Friday, we had no less than a dozen cars pass us during that first 2.3 miles.
At the corner of HH and 82, Theresa was now faced with a crossing of the Wisconsin River, from Juneau County into Adams County, but at least here there was somewhere for her to ride her bike while scores of cars flew by. I opted for not trying to follow behind and block traffic. Instead I waited just off the road and counted while ten cars passed until I jumped back into traffic and drove across the bridge. She was just about done and turning onto County Rd Z when I caught up to her.
The ride along County Rd Z was level and open, even a bit downhill overall despite going upriver, and traveled past several farms. Nice enough as it goes, but with zero space to ride a bike it was necessary to ride in the lane of traffic, where cars are used to passing along at 60 miles an hour or more on those narrow lanes. Many a cyclist has died in similar circumstances, so we felt our method of blocking the lane was the best way to go. It was only a little more than two miles, after all, and we felt like people could use a little slowing down.
After finally making our way up Fawn Ave and into the tiny town of White Creek we felt a little safer on the roads. Here, Theresa took a break and I took my turn.
After repeating the exercise with me on the bike and Theresa behind the wheel we were back in the mode of being able to ride together again, which I find far more enjoyable. We drove up the road a ways to the parking area on 14th Ct. at the Quincy Bluff state natural area.
Have you ever noticed how the most inhospitable and uninhabitable places in the state always seem to turn into 'State Natural Areas'? And, not coincidentally, how often the Ice Age Trail leads you into and through these Natural Areas? It would not surprise me at all if at some point in the future someone will proudly cut the ribbon on a brand new section of trail called the Quincy Bluff Segment, starting with a loop up to duck creek, winding along through the White Creek Wetlands, up and over Quincy Bluff, and then back to 14th Drive or 14th Court. It's a beautiful enough area, to be sure, and there is no doubt that Quincy Bluff and Rattlesnake Mound, as well as some of the other amazing geological features through here were formed 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age.
I did stop along the way to take a couple of photos of this feature, which was NOT Quincy Bluff, but which was a cool feature nevertheless.
Honestly, the photos cannot do justice to the gigantic rock features along this road. What looks like a charming pile of rocks in the photos is an imposing and startling monolith of stone, rising up out of the ground like a petrified ship wasting away on an ocean of sand. They are worthy of gaping at, and possibly even hiking up to and around. Not so for us today - we were putting on miles.
As our day continued, we moved up to the next parking area on 14th Road, which brought us biking past Rattlesnake Mound, another gigantic feature on the landscape that no doubt has a reason for the name given to it in the mid 1860's. There is no reason to believe that you wouldn't still find a timber rattler or two warming themselves on the rocks on sunny summer days.
Across the road from Rattlesnake mound (I think that's where it was) we passed a wooded area that was so unusual I stopped to take a picture of that, too. It was completely natural, I could tell, but it was also unlike any woodland I had ever seen before. There was a carpet of long grass, from which sprung a mature canopy of deciduous trees - and there was nothing in-between but the occasional fallen limb.
For acres and acres, there was a mature forest area with literally no understory. It looked like someone had spent years of their life manicuring the woods.
The next thing to do, of course, was to ride past the train tracks and get into Adams. But when we drove the car up to the train tracks, the train was still there. This time I drove all the way up to the train, and discovered that indeed, there was a place to pull over right next to the tracks, so we parked the van there and walked the three tenths of a mile to Theresa's car. Still - the train hadn't moved. It had been there at least forty-five minutes that we knew of, and probably much longer. We could see the end of the train, just eight or ten rail cars down the tracks, but there was no way around it by car. So we gave up on that and drove around it and up into Adams. It was 2:30 pm, and we could tell from the looming skies that out luck with the weather today was about to run out. We decided to treat ourselves to some lunch in town.
We drove both vehicles around the offending train, about a seven-mile detour, and up into Adams-Friendship. The gray skies were turning black. Rain was imminent. We drove all the way to the north end of Friendship to park our cars on WI-13, and were running for the front door of the Friendship Café when the skies opened up and started to pour.
This was a genuine gully-washer. A worm-drowner. A hold-onto-your-children storm, complete with crashing bolts of lightning and thunder. And through it all, our waitress politely served us our coffee and lunch specials, with complimentary soup-of-the day. It was delightful.
The storm, powerful in its first 20 minutes, didn't have much staying power. By the time we were done with desert, the lightning had mostly passed and it was down to a steady rain. We decided to spend our time driving the route we would later cover on bicycle to see if we wanted to do it together, or if we needed to do it one at a time for safety. We drove back down to the train tracks to see if the train had moved. Nope. It was there for the long-haul. just ten cars from being out of the way, blocking one of the major roads into town. 'Don't mind me - I'm just gonna sit here for a while', it seemed to say.
We were so close to getting off map 55f-W, we really wanted to get that last couple of miles done, but the rain wouldn't let up, and there was still occasional lightning, so we just kept driving. We discovered that the trail does indeed go off-road briefly in town, running along a path in Friendship Park before veering west and going around Friendship Mound and up to Roche-a-Cri State Park.
From here we started hatching a plan. What if, instead of camping in Oxford that night, we van-camped down here at Roche-a-Cri? We stopped at the ranger station and asked about parking, and the ranger there told us that as long as we had a State Sticker on the car, we were welcome to park in the lot on Czech Ave, even overnight.
The rain had gotten steadily worse again, and we checked the forecast. Rain, followed by heavy rain, followed by thunderstorms, then a little more rain. Any hope we had of doing two and a half more miles to complete one more map was erased. We were probably done for the day.
So we left one vehicle behind and drove the van back to camp in Oxford to get supplies. We were perfectly set up for van camping, having planned for that contingency, and made our way back to the State Park well before dinnertime. Of course, we weren't very hungry after our very full lunch, so dinner wasn't a factor.
We decided to try driving down to the train tracks. the rain was petty light at the time, and we were entertaining the idea of doing just a little more biking, or even walking, in the rain. At first we thought there had been a change. And, indeed it did look a little different. There was a different set of cars across the tracks, or so we thought at first. Then, on closer inspection, we could see that there was now not one, but TWO trains parked across the roadway. More than four hours after we had first encountered the blockage, that same train was on the far side of a second train that came to hang around like buffalo on the roads in Yellowstone Park. Unperturbed, and unmoving. And there was a car parked down by the train with a photographer hanging around that we didn't like the looks of, so we abandoned the idea of getting anything else done for the day.
We went back to the 'Winter Parking Area' for Roche-a-Cri (Screaming Rock) and settled in for the night. There was a vault toilet there, which was highly convenient, but no running water, and no picnic tables. We did snack a little on trail food, then prepared ourselves for bed. We were asleep before dark.
Running Total: 658.3 miles of trail covered; 68 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 89.
No comments:
Post a Comment