My friend Laura emailed about plans to bike the Badger
State Trail near Paoli, and I decided to take up the invitation. The group was potentially five people, but that was until the weather looked so threatening. Rain had already fallen by mid-morning, and thunderstorms were being predicted - and suddenly there were zero participants. Dang! As soon as the trip was officially cancelled I realized that there was still most of one participant - I hadn't been out on my bike for over a month and I really wanted to go. I don't wish to be hit by lightening, but there wasn't any yet, and what's a little rain?
On that basis I convinced Laura that the two of us should try a short ride. We would start just east of Paoli and not go far. That way if the weather turned ugly, or if we got too wet and cold, we could get back quickly. Yay! Laura picked me up in her van, with the fancy towbar-mounted bike rack. I'm very happy that my bike folds in half if I need to put it in my car, but there's still a lot to be said for just popping it on a bike rack. We stowed the battery inside the van and we were off.
Turns out there is road construction going south of Verona on Highway PB, so we got back on 151 and then took Highway 69 south to Paoli. From there we had to backtrack north on PB (which said it was closed to through traffic from this end too) as far as Purcell Rd. We went east on Purcell Rd. until we came to the small parking lot for the bike trail.
From this point you have two pavement options. Going south is a "crushed limestone" trail that is mostly in good shape, although it is uneven in places and lacks the slickness of a paved trail - which is what you get if you go north. We opted for the more challenging surface first, and went a mile or two south and then headed back.
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| The trail going south: tree-lined, paved with crushed limestone. |
What a beautiful day! This was one of those times we gambled and won. No sign of storms, no sign of rain! The day was beautifully cool and pleasant, and the sun even peeked out a bit. The trail is an old rail corridor, so there are mature trees on both sides. It would have been pleasant even on a sunny day. Every so often the view opened up to a vista of Wisconsin countryside, with rolling hills of pastures and hayfields and cornfields. The weather has been mostly kind to us this year, compared with last year's drought, and everything looks lush and green.
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| Beautiful Wisconsin farmland. |
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| My friend Laura, a business consultant whose hobbies include biking, kayaking, and bird-watching. I love the wooden bridges that have replaced all the old railroad bridges along this path. |
One of our interesting discoveries was a pair of horses that we could just see in a farmyard. One had its head down and the other appeared to be looking at something. So we watched them for a few moments - but they didn't move. Out came the binoculars - they're sculptures! Very nice, in very horse-like poses. Sculpted in iron, I think, and covered with "chestnut" colored rust.
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| Two horses we spotted quite far back off the trail - that turned out to be sculptures! Luckily Laura has a good telephoto. Photo by Laura V. Page, laurapagephoto.com |
We got back to the parking lot and headed the other way this time, after stopping to photograph the baby robins in a nest at the trail kiosk. This way there are a couple of roads to cross, including County Highway M, which took a couple of minutes of waiting.
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| Three baby robins at the kiosk at the bike trail parking lot. |
I spent the time musing on how I'm now old enough now to say, in my old-person voice, "When I was a girl, this was practically a little country road with hardly any traffic at all." The reason I remember that is that a friend and I tried hitch hiking along this road, and very few people even came by. It was the early 70s, and a lot of young people hitch hiked, but it wasn't a very smart thing to do; at least we had the sense to do it together. It's a different world now, better in some ways and worse in others. It feels weird to look back forty years and remember that I ever did that.
We got as far as Seminole Highway, where it meets Whalen Road, and then headed back. It ended up being a very short ride by anyone's standards, and yet very satisfying. There had almost been no ride at all, and yet it turned out to be a beautiful day. We explored a bit of trail that we now know we'd like to see more of - next time we'll start earlier in the day!
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| A cow pasture along the path. The cows - Holsteins, some of them with such small black spots they looked polka-dotted - were in a different area. If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you can see the family of Cranes that are feeding here. |
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| Near the south end of Fish Hatchery Road. I love these beautiful old oak trees. |
On the way back we stopped at Cluck, the store in Paoli that is all about chickens. They even have a few chickens of their own out back. It's a wonderful store, whether you just like chickens or whether you have your own already or would like to. They have supplies and resources for raising chickens, not to mention experience and expertise - and they have all kinds of chicken-themed merchandise. My favorite item, I think, was a set of three ceramic prep bowls for cooking - with a chicken theme. I don't even have chickens, but I think they're beautiful and full of personality. The store has been open almost a year, and I've been meaning to get there, so it was a really fun stop.
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| This beautiful rooster image I found on Wikipedia Commons. Thanks to photographer Cefaclor for making this photo available for others to use. |
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