We are out of Medford early, on our way to Wausau, cutting
across the center of Wisconsin, and moving as fast as we can. We have been following Highway 64 and it has
been a good run, but today, we have to cut south, and start making our way to
the ferry at Manitowac.
Something shifts as we move further south. The day before we had dubbed Wisconsin the
“Deer Lawn Ornament Capital” of the USA.
Today, on Highway 97, lawns are not decorated with concrete lawn
critters, instead we start to see “Impeach Obama,” “Nobama” and “Walker is Right” signs. There is a huge uptick in the number of flags
being displayed. The road is rougher and
the traffic is faster. The sense of
play that marked the day before is gone.
Just outside of the town of Athens, we are on a high point,
and can see big ridges in the distance.
That must be the “mountain” of the Mountain to Bay trail. Road A heads due east toward Wausau, but we
have decided to take Road M, after lunch in Athens, which winds over to Wausau
and will get us off this rather unpleasant, rough road.
We take a quick ride down to the bridge over the Big Rib
River and come up into town of Athens, which is dominated by a lush central
square. We are ready for lunch, but
don’t see a café. There’s a bakery, and
we enter there in hopes that there might be sandwiches. The coffee is off and the bakery only has
sweets, so I ask if there is any place we can get a sandwich in town. She points with her thumb and says, “The
mercantile next door.”
With visions of cold sandwiches wrapped in plastic, we go to
what appears to be an early 20th century five and dime. We open the door and are completely
surprised. What had been a variety store
has become a charming café with wooden tables covered with flowery tablecloths.
Two women sit at a table, with laptops
opens, obviously in a heavy work-related discussions. A group of solidly built, mostly blonde, men
and women, are scurrying about, preparing for the lunch rush.
When the youngish waitress arrives at our table, she announces
that the special today is smothered pork chops with mashed potatoes, corn, and
coleslaw. Thinking that the side dishes
sound better than the main dish, I ask if the corn is fresh. Oh, no, it comes from a can, she says
sheepishly. At least she recognized the
oddity of her answer. The food is good,
and as we eat our lunch, we watch a constant parade of folks, some in business
garb, some fresh from the fields, come to eat and visit. The customers visit with each other, but only
look at us.
After lunch, we ride down to Road M, which is closed. Now
what? The next road is Wisconsin 29, but
it is unlikely that this divided highway will allow bikes. We ride the 10 miles to 29, and sure enough,
bikes are not allowed. Our next choice
is to go 5 miles to the south and take Road N.
The wind is blowing hard to the east and we need to go east, but we keep
heading south, looking for a paved road.
This is definitely one of the disadvantages of trying to figure out your
own route.
About a mile south of 29, we choose to take a dirt
road. Bad choice. The surface is soft and our tires are
slipping around. We wobble alongside
farms in the midst of their harvest. Wes
hollers at farmer on a huge tractor, “Does this road go to Wausau?” He says, “Sure,” but his face says, “What on
earth are you doing here?” We muddle on for another mile or two, while I get
more and more frustrated. Riding the 10
miles extra to get on a paved road now seems absolutely necessary.
We make our way to the paved road, get the tail wind, and
it’s a good thing because it is very hilly.
The area around Wausau is characterized by big hills and two anomalous
big mountains which can be seen for miles.
Why there are mountains in the middle of Wisconsin remains an unanswered
mystery to us. We get a nice wind assist
as we climb ever higher and higher hills.
A few miles in, the road suddenly becomes very busy. Highway 29 has been closed for repairs. Now this little country road with no
shoulders is crowded with big trucks and fast cars. A few times we have to leave the road on
steep hills to let trucks go by. It
pretty much sucks. As the afternoon
wears on, and we are still a long way from Wausau, we stop at a pub for a
break. The waitress seems surly, but
when another man comes in and engages us in conversation, she warms up and ends
up buying our root beer and beer for us.
We finally get to Wausau via the largest plastic land we
have seen on this trip. We cross a big
waterway and make our way downtown, where we have a room. The Jefferson Street Inn is part of the
re-development of downtown. Former
factories and warehouses are now trendy, upscale boutiques and bars. For the first time since we left Portland, we
see people in suits. We really stick out
in our grubby bicycle wear, especially as we push the hotel cart with our
baggage around the street to our entrance.
We go the Happy Hour in the hotel bar, and get a big kick
out of watching the young urban professionals work the room for love or
money. Wes has an overly sweet martini,
just like most of the young women in the room.
We end up in the dining room, next to a group of six young women from
the same office. We watch them in the
mirror, and listen closely as they hash and re-hash office politics and the bad
decision-making of their supervisor. It
is clear that one side of the table is strongly anti-manager, with the woman in
the middle dominating the conversation.
The woman on the opposite end of the table is offering resistance, while
the two women next to her look like they want to disappear.
The next morning, at the breakfast bar, we see for the first
time that there is flooding in Colorado around Boulder. My eldest brother, Stephen, lives up a
mountain canyon on a creek just outside of Boulder. Back at our room, I try calling all of my
brother’s numbers. There is no
answer. We cannot even leave a
message. I text. No response.
This is very worrying.
We leave through the convention center at the hotel. We see a man on a cell phone, with his suit
coat unbuttoned, and tie loose, in a complete state of stress, even though it
is only 7:30am. Something has obviously
gone wrong with the event he was coordinating that day, and it is all he can do
to not yell into the phone. We pass by a
table with bored staffers sitting by big stacks of conference materials. My body remembers all of this, and I feel a
spasm of sympathetic stress, then feel glad it is not me organizing this event.
Wausau has a full set of bike routes around the town, but the
desk clerks are only vaguely aware of them.
Wes spends 15 minutes with one clerk, who tries to describe the bike
route to the beginning of the Mountain to Bay Trail. It is clear she is having a hard time getting
out of her car brain. (This is quite
common---most people answer the question “how far?” with “how long it takes to
drive there.”) Finally, she gets her brain re-oriented and gives Wes excellent,
complicated instructions that wind us through town, through suburbs and
parkland, and finally around a mountain to get to the start of this 110 mile
rails to trail path.
At first we are confused when we get close. All we see is a ragged path with a rough and
sandy surface. We follow it a quarter
mile, already making plans to find another route, when we see the actual beginning
of the route, with its kiosk, tables, restrooms, and asphalt surface. What a relief! We start making our way on the path. We will ride this path all the way to Green
Bay, with a stop in the tourist town of Schawano.
The first part is beautifully maintained, with lots of
parks, kiosks, and waymarkers. However,
by the time we get to Eland, where we planned to take our break, the trail has
deteriorated to a two track, with exceptionally rough bridges over an increasingly
remote and boggy landscape. The bridges
always have sponsorship signs, saying things like “Bridge sponsored by Knechtel
Construction.” We make up stories about
going into Knechtel Construction and saying, “You know that bridge you
sponsored 15 years ago when they first built the rails to trails? It’s a mess now….are you sponsoring its
repairs now? You aren’t? Didn’t you know that you are responsible for
those bridges as long as your sign is standing?
You didn’t? You’ll need to
consult the fine print on page 14b of your sponsorship agreement. Please see the footnote: “Sponsorship in
Perpetuity”. It doesn’t help with the
splintered boards sticking up, or the 2 inch drops off the end of the bridge,
but it amuses us and helps to pass the time.
We completely lose the track at Eland, and there is no place
whatever to take a break or buy some food.
We start following a track, but the mileage markers have started over
and the direction isn’t right. (One of
the on-going jokes of this trip has to do with the compass Wes is
carrying. On the night before we left
Wyoming, Wes had a small smeltdown about the weight we were carrying. One of things he wanted to jettison as excess
weight was the 2 ounce compass. I
insisted and, of course, we have used the compass every day and sometimes it has
absolutely saved the day.)
We go back to where we lost the track and puzzle over the
course of action. I try my brothers’
numbers again to no avail. I send an
email. I leave a message with my second
brother, Scott, to see if he has heard anything from Stephen.
Thank goodness a mom, her teenage son and two tiny, barky
dogs decide to go for a walk. They give
us directions, explaining how this is a crossroads of several trails and that
our branch will veer off and go the right direction in another mile. They also tell us there are two places to get
food within the next five miles: either at the Mohican casino at the next
crossroads, or go straight south to Wittenberg. “My son has walked there
before!” she offers.
We thank them kindly, make our way to the crossroads, while
wondering how the Mohican people, originally from New York State, ended up here
in mid-Wisconsin. We constantly marvel
at how often people give us suggestions for 10 mile or more detours for food or
recreation. I suppose this is another
form of car brain.
At the next road crossing, we look down and see a small,
forlorn looking casino. No thanks.
Something is bound to come up. The route
becomes more remote. We cross through
large stands of 2nd or 3rd growth timber. It doesn’t look like many cyclists have been
on this route. We pass no walkers, no
bicyclists. At a certain point, we are
dead hungry. We have been cycling from
Wausau for many hours, and have gone about 35 miles. Now is the time for what we call “Emergency
apples.” We always carry an apple or two
with us. I sometimes have cream cheese
or peanut butter from the breakfast bar.
In the midst of the forest, we stop at one of the picnic
tables set periodically about the trail.
We eat an apple, an orange, and two small packets of peanut butter. We tap into our water stores. It will have to do. Something is bound to come up.
The trail crosses all sorts of paved and dirt roads. For quite a long way, at these intersections,
we see signs to Bonnie’s Bar and Grill. It
has the same effect as the signs advertising Wall Drug. We really want to know where this Bar and
Grill is. Finally, about 45 miles in,
and fairly late in the afternoon, I spot the town of Bowler just off the track.
I see a beer sign in the distance. Like
a hound on a scent, I call Wes and we wend our way to Bonnie’s Bar and Grill.
It is capacious and north-woodsy, with all sorts of dead
animals on the wall. We make our way to
the bar, where there are three men and a
woman laughing uproariously. One fellow
is gigantic, maybe 6’5, muscular in a big belly sort of way, with his arm in a
sling. The fellow next to him is rather
short, as round as he is tall, with a huge bruise on his cheek and a large
bandage on his brow. Next to him is a
slender fellow with big aviator style glasses and a Packers baseball cap. Around the corner, a blousy blonde whose
dye-job needs a re-touch, supposedly doing the books, but mostly laughing and
joking, is Bonnie herself.
The two guys are off work after a car wreck somehow related
to their work, so now they are killing time at Bonnie’s, who they expect to
keep them entertained. They roll dice,
they tell jokes. She gets out some kind
of numbers game that will give them free appetizers. The aviator glasses guy is some sort of
dogsbody, although we don’t think he actually works at the bar. Bonnie tells him to go check on our order and
he does. Oh, could he please go see how
much butter is still in the back, and he does.
The bartender is the solid center of this cacophonous group, but even
so, after hearing that we travelling to Shawano, pulls in closer to warn
us. “Make sure you don’t stay in the
cult hotel there.”
We ask about the cult, and she hollers over at Bonnie, “Hey
Bonnie, tell these guys about the cult in Shwano!” Bonnie couldn’t be more bored to tell us that
the police raided the hotel there where the proprietors were selling sex
parties in the guise of religious experiences as well as rooms. The 30 year bartender was titillated by
this news, Bonnie, not so much.
Just as we getting ready to leave, a brown skinned fellow
with big red suspenders comes over and introduces himself to us. “I heard you say that you are from
Wyoming. I used to live in Wyoming, so I
thought I would come say hi.” As it
turns out, Gary is a Mohican who lived for a while in Sheridan, Wyoming. He knew a lot of folks up there and had quite
a few acquaintances on the Crow and Sioux reservations in Montana. He was tickled by our stories of our
encounters with the Assiniboine people.
When I told him about one of the mysteries we encountered on the
trip---why do the Blackfeet people in Western Montana speak an Algonquin
dialect?—he responds, “That’s what we speak!
I had no idea! Man, I need to
find out the story on that!”
Just as we leave, a news report about the Colorado floods
comes on the bar television. It is much
worse than anyone expected and it is still raining. I still have not heard anything from anyone
in Colorado or Wyoming.
Bonnie’s has been a great, much needed stop (although with
less than average bar food), but it is getting late, and we still have fifteen
miles to Shawano (said Schwano). About
eight miles outside of this resort community on the lake, the trail returns to
asphalt and we are going as fast as we can, knowing that we will lose the light
if don’t get there soon. About 1 mile
away from town, the trail just ends. We
wander about, cross the nearby freeway, and end up on the busy main road into
town. It is after 5, and we know from
past experience, that everything in these small towns will close at any moment.
We have reserved a cottage on the lake, with a
kitchenette. We want to pick up food and
get to our cabin before dark. Wes is
agitated about our situation, especially after the detour and trail
confusion. We try to call the small
resort for instructions, but there is no answer. This should have been the first clue. We ask a fellow on the side of the road how
to get to this resort; he has never heard of it and can’t help us. This should have been the second clue. Finally, Wes goes into a store just as they
are closing, while I try to use the map feature on my phone to figure out where
we need to go.
As some of you know, Wes is big and energetic even when he
is calm. When he is anxious and hyped
up, he can be overwhelming. When I went
into the store to tell him I found the route, I see the small, middle-aged
store owner with a map quaking in front of big, gesticulating Wes, who is
demanding where is the closest grocery store.
The fellow says, “The main store is just a few blocks to the south…” Wes
almost shouts, “That’s the wrong direction! Isn’t there something to the
east….?” The storeowner offers, “There’s
a Wallmart…” Wes, “A Wallmart?!!!” I guide Wes away and we make our way in the
dying light to our resort on the lake.
We pick up some prepared food and a bottle of wine, look longingly at
the nice looking motels in town, and wind our way through a tiny road during a
spectacular sunset until we find the West Shore Resort.
Our hearts sink as we go into the office, which reeks of
uncleaned cat boxes. The little bent man
finally comes out, rubs his eyes, apologizes and says he spent the day at the
hospital with his wife, who’s not doing so good. He doesn’t know how to run the credit card
machine, and scribbles down the number, mumbling, “My daughter will take care
of it in the morning.” He tells us that
most of these cabins now have month to month renters, but that he likes to keep
one available for people like us. He
stresses, like a mantra, that it has a kitchenette and two bedrooms.
We walk through the grounds in the dying light and see that
this resort has become low end housing.
The unit is horrible. It is dark
and too late to leave. Wes sits in one
chair, and jumps right up. The arms are
sticky with some sort of unknown goo. He
sits in another. Its leg is broken. The nicest chair in the lot has ink spilled
all over it. I am sullen; Wes is
livid. I sit silently and read in the
one chair I trust. Wes paces the room,
lamenting his fate and wanting me to be as upset as he is. This is one of the worst places we have ever
stayed, made much worse by the resort price we paid. This is not one of our better nights.
The next morning we get out of there as soon as possible. The best thing about a bike trip is that
nothing lasts too long. Soon we are back
on the path and on our way to Green Bay, where we will encounter more of weird,
the wild, and the wonderful of Wisconsin.
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posted from Port Dover, ONT
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posted from Port Dover, ONT
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