Day 176: Gandy Dancer Segment,  Connecting Route, Polk County

Day 176: Saturday, May 21st, 2022

Total Miles hiked for the day: 20.3; Net Miles 0.7

Location 1: The Gandy Dancer Segment  

15.5 Miles of trail covered, plus bonus 0.3 miles connecting route

Last night was the beginning of our second phase of hiking the trail. By that I mean we have been here before - even counted this segment as 'done' - but we are back again because last time around we were on bicycle, and this time we were here to do it again on foot. This is our quest for Thousand Miler status, and to achieve that we have new gaps to fill. We're starting with the one furthest to the west. 

Last night Theresa and I drove out from Wausau to Luck, Wi, to sleep overnight in our van (with permission) in the back lot of the fabulous Café Wren. The owner there has been greeting users of the Gandy Dancer State Trail and Ice Age National Scenic Trail since 2003, and if you ask in advance she will happily let you park overnight in the back lot. 

It was just a bit before dawn when I awoke, outside temperature 35 degrees. We were toasty warm in our sleeping bags, but there was a good, thick layer of frost on the inside of the windows. 

The plan this morning was that when I woke up, which is nearly always earlier than when Theresa wakes up, I could take the other car north and hike back to the van. Then, if I get to the van and she's still sleeping I would drive the car with her inside to the next hop and walk another mile or two.  

The time was 5:59 am, and the air was crisp and still. This was the view from the van, the trail a mere 200 feet away. 

By 6:10 I had driven to the place where the trail crosses 280th Ave, almost exactly two miles north of our sleeping spot. I might have considered 270th Ave, but there was no way to park and get to the trail, since the trail was a bridge that passed high over the road. 

I was serenaded by a number of different kinds of Warblers this morning. This I know because I have been using an App on my phone to help me with songbird identification. It's called Song Sleuth. I'm not in love with it, but it does give me a tool to identify unfamiliar birds by sound.  

Of course, crisp bright mornings like this often have clouds made of ice crystals floating high up in the air. Add bright sunshine to that and you can get spectacular sun dogs, which is exactly what I saw today. 

I like taking pictures of wildlife when I get the chance. This little baby bunny was hopping on the side of the trail when I came by and barely hopped to the side while I passed. This is a close-up of the rabbit. 

And this is what it looked like without the zoom. Oh, he's in there. Dead center. You can find him. 

Then a little further down the path I saw this in the sky and had to take another photo. This brings sun dog to a whole new level. It was nearly a sun-dog rainbow, with wide arcs both left and right and a light rainbow directly over the top of the sun. 

What impressed me even more was the shadow-like area surrounding the sun itself. I can't quite tell if it's an optical illusion, just because the area beyond the sun dogs is so much brighter, or if it was actually darker in the middle. I'm leaning toward the illusion, but I can tell you that when I was staring at it it really did look darker in the middle. 

Theresa says this looks like an eye. She's not wrong about that. 

When I got to 270th Ave I had this lovely bridge to cross. Which is why it's not reasonable to park on the side of the road there. 

The area next to the trail has a lot of standing water, especially after getting south of what is laughingly labeled 265th Ave. Believe me when I tell you 265th Ave is NOT a road you want to drive on. It's not a road at all. 

When I got to the van Theresa was up and getting ready, which was fantastic timing, and got us off to a great start for the rest of the day. 

We decided to celebrate by walking up to Café Wren and having breakfast. There's a path that goes from the parking area up to the back of the restaurant, past a gazebo which would probably have been a fabulous place to hang out if it wasn't so close to freezing out. 

We brought our books, of course, and made our plans. Since I was planning to be here for only the weekend, and needed to drive home on Sunday, we wanted to use the opportunity for me to hike as many miles as possible. Theresa, on the other hand, was going to stay an extra day or two, if needed, to make sure she got it all done. 

The most efficient way to accomplish our goal was for Theresa do drop me off at the place on 280th where I started the day so I could walk north, and she drove to the end to crisscross her way back. This gave each of us a car to drive to. (More on that later.)

I met her just south of the 38/45 overpass bridge. 

Something tells me Theresa hadn't fully embraced the joy of the outdoors yet by that time in the morning. 

The weather had warmed up significantly. I reached the official end of the Segment by this point, and there was a 0.3 mile connecting route between me and the waiting car. 

Location 1b: Bonus Connecting Route

0.3 miles of trail covered

The short walk down the road to the west end of the Trade River Segment took about 10 minutes. By the time I got there at 9:30 am, it already felt like t-shirt weather. 

I went back and picked Theresa up and that was when we kicked in part 3 of our plan for the day. Theresa drove me all the way to the south end of the segment, and I grabbed a couple bottles of liquid and started walking north, intent on finishing all 15.5 miles of the segment by the end of the day. Since I had the first four miles or so taken care of, that left a little more than eleven miles in front of me. While Theresa drove north to start self-leapfrogging her way south using two cars, I found myself on the road to Centuria. 

On the north end of Centuria there is a DCA site that no doubt is the first (or last) stop for many a through-hiker. It's flat, grassy, and near enough to town that a hiker would be able to find any necessity. 

A reminder that people in this area find their tractors, and their drivers, "sexy". 

I found some more of the pheasant back mushrooms that I first learned about this year. I haven't had the chance to taste any yet, but I'm looking forward to it. 

The last time we did the Gandy Dancer Trail we were on bicycle, and it was pretty late in the day. Part of it we ended up actually biking in the dark, and as insane as it sounds, we didn't have decent lights. Making it more exciting was that there had been a recent storm, so every once in a while we had to swerve wildly or come to a stop because of a tree that lay into or across the trail. 

Not so today. The trees had all been cleared off of the trail long ago (though you could still see them on the side). Plus the addition of sunlight made all the trees just a teensy bit easier to see. 

In the wintertime the Gandy Dancer Trail is open to snowmobiles, making it a potentially hazardous place to walk in the wintertime. Given how the locals mark side-trails when the snow is gone, I'm not completely sure there aren't a few hazards in the summertime, too. 

I crossed paths with Theresa right around Milltown, but I didn't get pictures. I did catch a photo of a small waterway visible from the trail. 

 

There isn't a lot of excitement to be found along the Gandy Dancer. It's flat. It's gravel. It's basically straight. If it was a color it would be beige. If it was clothing it would be a t-shirt. Comfortable, easy-going - just not very exciting. Fortunately there were many geocaches along the way, so I found ample distraction through the empty miles. 

Empty, of course, until I got all the way back up to Luck. There, the trail walks past the Hanne Ravnholt Pavilion, a building erected in honor of the good Mr. Ravnholt, Luck's first butter-maker. It's also an excellent shelter from harsh weather if such is needed. 

Inside there were a number of butter-churning artifacts from the old creamery. 

I'm told there was a geocache right there at the pavilion, and I looked for it, but never found it. Perhaps on a return trip I'll be more "Luck-y". 

With one more mile to go I enjoyed catching a few pictures of the animals and listening to the birds. 

Right before reaching the parking lot where I would be done with the Gandy Dancer Segment for real, I was treated to a nice, bucolic scene. What caught my attention the most was the one black sheep. I guess there has to be one in every family. 

It was 4:50 when I got back to the Café Wren to wait for Theresa. She had covered ground all the way down to Milltown. I had already covered 15.8 miles today, and I was looking forward to sitting back and having a little dinner. What better place to have it than the Wren?

Location 2: The connecting route between the Gandy Dancer Segment and the St. Croix Falls Segment

4.5 Miles of trail covered.

Dinner - sandwich wraps, to be precise - was fast and delicious. I suppose we could have called it a day right there, but it was a very long drive to get here. I still had legs and daylight, so with whatever rest I could manage with a one-hour break, Theresa took me back down to the south end of the Gandy Dancer Segment where I started walking west for part 4 of the plan. 

I've seen signs like this before. I'm not sure why the state feels the need to restrict the speed of hikers to 45 mph. 

The temperature today hit the lower 50's. That was just warm enough to start bring out the toads from their winter torpor. 

The walk from the Gandy Dancer Trail to the St. Croix River is generally downhill, of course, but it starts out with a slow uphill walk for the first mile until cresting out on 210th Street. Then for the next mile or so the road bounces up and down around the 1200 foot elevation level, before starting downhill for real at 220th Street, labeled as Sunshine Street on the map. 

By the time 160th Ave hits Highway 87, a very busy roadway by the way, I had lost 400 feet in elevation and was now only 75 feet above the elevation of the river, not quite visible below through the trees. 

I had a mile of roadway left before reaching the St. Croix River Segment trailhead. But this is when things got ugly for Theresa. 

I received a call from Theresa, who was being followed and intimidated while she was walking on the trail between 200th Street and 210th Street. Without going into excessive detail, she was being watched and followed by a man whose land was adjacent to the trail, and the vibe he was giving off was not, 'Hello there, IAT hiker! how's it going?'

I was useless. I had no car and no means of getting back to help her in any way other than on my feet, and I was miles away. I could, however, stay on the phone with her and make sure she got to the car safely, which she did. We really don't know what would have happened if that man had caught up with her, but we're both happy we didn't have to find out. I trust Theresa's intuition and judgement. Whatever might have happened, it wouldn't have been positive. 

Crisis over, I was able to continue my walk, which went north on 87 for about three tenths of a mile before darting northwest on River Road. There was a lot of traffic on 87, but there was actually enough shoulder on the river side of the guardrail that I was able to walk with relative safety. Then I went down River Road until finally spotting the trailhead sign a few minutes before 7:00. 

I spent some time there by the river, exploring the shoreline and my memories, which I must admit seemed quite fuzzy since they were nine years distant. 

And by 7:01, Theresa was there to rescue me. I have had long mileage days in the past, but this was my longest, having covered more than 20 miles. 

The final accounting for today's efforts are a little strange. I discovered that early on in my tally I only recorded 15.1 miles for Gandy Dancer. I also completely missed counting that 0.3 mile connecting route between Gandy and Trade River, so the tally for today is:

• Completed maps 2 and 3
• 0.7 new miles covered
• Converted 15.1 miles from biked to hiked
• 282.0 miles to go

Running Total: 1176.2 miles of trail covered, 183.5 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 176.

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