Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

2025 Year End Review

With 2025 coming to an end, we are celebrating nine and a half years of living on the road full time in our 38 foot motorhome. We began and finished the year at our RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). We purchased the lot almost 2 years ago. It’s a fairly basic lot with a nice flat concrete driveway and the standard full hook up utilities but it does have a 10 foot by 12 foot shed which is very convenient for working on projects over the months we will be stationary here. The resort has a lot of nice amenities but we don’t take advantage of most of them. I must admit that I do miss the occasional winter spent out in southern California and Arizona where the hiking and views are a lot nicer.

We started out 2025 wrapping up some of our doctors appointments in an attempt to get our old bodies in shape for another six months of travel. Our plans for the year were to explore some of the upper Midwest. As we looked into what we wanted to see and do in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we picked out a few events that were both location and date specific. These types of stops have a much firmer window that form the rough outline and timing of our journey.

The first event was to take part in a Habitat for Humanity build in Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. The two week window for the RV-Care-A-Vanner program was from mid to late June. The second planned event was to attend the Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin. This weeklong show runs in late July. With those two points on our map we have quite a bit of distance and time to fill in before, between and after these events.

It is definitely a time consuming task to map out a route, plan our camping stops and figure out how long we want to stay in areas along the way. We spent a few weeks over last winter researching things to see and do in various cities along the route. Where is the good hiking or points of interest?  I use a Google Map and a website called Furkot to piece together a plan. As we get a better handle on our route and timing, we can start to make reservations at various campgrounds and by the end of April we had a 70% of the nights reserved out through Labor Day. We have found that after then, we can be much more serendipitous about our planning for the route back to Florida.

Below is a map of our route for the year. By starting and returning to the same place, the map is a bit confusing. I have a link below the map that will open the actual Google Map which allows others to zoom and pan around to get a better view of the route. Clicking on any of the pins for a travel stop will pop up a window with the name of the stop as well as the blog post related to that stop.

Click HERE to open the Google Map

We left Titusville in late April with just over 7 weeks to make our way to Marquette. While getting the rig serviced in South Carolina, we needed to make a quick drive up to Ohio for a death in the family. It was nice to see so many relatives and friends even if it was at a sad time. We continued our journey with 2 weeks in a few state parks in the southern Appalachians.  In Cincinnati, we got a chance to get together with family and have some Skyline Chili and Graeters Ice Cream. We managed to sneak in a stop at a National Park and get our motorhome windshield replaced in northern Indiana. Then we worked our way up north through Michigan stopping at a few Elks Lodges before crossing over the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula. The time spent working with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Marquette was quite rewarding and we learned a few construction tricks.

We had about 3 weeks before the Oshkosh Air Show and we got to explore the western side of the UP at a few different campgrounds before working our way south into Wisconsin. We really enjoyed the air show and you’ll read more about that later in this post. Then we continued west into Minnesota where we spent the next 37 nights at various county and state parks. I was able to talk my wife into a side trip into eastern North Dakota to experience what others have called the Disneyland of geocaching - more on that later as well.

It was about this time that we “called an audible”. We had previously planned to head back to Marquette and help out again on the Habitat build and see how it had progressed since our stop in June. But after we had talked with some fellow campers while in Minnesota, we decided to return to Minnesota to check out the north shore area along Lake Superior. This gave us the opportunity to even meet up with my nephew and his wife from Cincinnati while they were in town for her high school reunion. By then it was late September and we figured we better start making our way south to avoid the cold and snow that is inevitable for this area.

We stopped in the Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin for several days where we got a chance to explore some of the unique landscape along the shoreline. As we headed south, we got to experience a cranberry harvest up close and personal and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin both in Wisconsin. We continued through parts of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana with Chris making a return to her college town of Peoria after 40 years!

Coming through Tennessee, we got to spend a week back in the mountains to see the fall colors before timing our drive through Atlanta on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic. A few days in a state park in Georgia and a couple of overnight stops at Elks Lodges and we made it back to Florida. It felt good when we returned to TGO after being gone for 190 nights. Things have definitely slowed down over the last two months as we get back to doing some work on the motorhome, our lot and getting in doctors appointments.

Here are a few more maps to help show where we spent our time. These “heat maps” are shaded to reflect the number of nights spent in each state - dark red is more nights, pale red is fewer nights. The first one is just for 2025. We camped in 13 different states this year with Florida, Minnesota and Michigan coming in the top 3 spots. The second map is similar but includes all 9.5 years we’ve been fulltime. The final map is the full 9.5 years but divided down to the county level to get a better understanding of where we were in each state.

Our 2025 Camping Map

Our 9.5 Year Camping Map

9.5 Years at County Level

Lots of people ask “how much does this lifestyle cost?”  Well the table below should help answer that. It doesn’t include items that would be spent if we were living in a sticks and bricks home like groceries, dining out, health care, clothing. But it does include camping costs as well as fuel for both the motorhome and the car as well as the miles driven. We did put on more miles on the rig this year but not significantly more.  Nothing else was all that surprising. Since the actual table has so many years now, I only include the past six years.  One other aspect is that the cost per night here at TGO is initially an educated estimate but I won’t have our last rental income check for the year until mid February at which point I will update the spreadsheet and this table.

Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years

The table does breakdown the type of places we have camped into four categories: boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. While we tend to like state, county or city parks over private campgrounds, location is our most important consideration when picking a campground as well as availability and do we fit in the site. This year we did bump up our state park number a little bit compared the past couple of years. Our overall cost per night worked out to be just over $32 - a bit higher than many years but again not significantly higher.

Like we have done in past year end reviews, we have looked over the 49 stops from this year and tried to identify our favorites. After the votes were tallied, we came up with 8 clear winners. Don't look at this list as the best campgrounds we stayed at during the year. I will provide the name of the campground we stayed at but these winning stops are based purely on its location or what we found to see and do in the area. I will also warn readers that one place on the list might be a mediocre location if you’re not an avid geocacher but we found it to be quite entertaining.

For each winning stop, there is a short description of what we liked about it, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide much more information about the stop and some of our favorite pictures from the stop. Since I am behind on my blog writing, there are some of the stops without the link to the post but this will be updated as they are written. In chronological order, here are the top 8 stops for 2025.

• Cloudland Canyon State Park, Trenton Georgia - We had done a day trip to this park back in 2021 and fell in love with the park and it’s wonderful hikes and views. We managed to get a spot for 5 nights and found it to be a rather roomy site. The final 8 miles into the parking lot is up a rather steep and curving road. It is doable in a rig our size but not necessarily fun. We repeated one of our favorite hikes the West Rim Loop. By staying in the park for multiple days, we were able to hike Sitton’s Gulch Trail which follows the base of the valley along a creek. This park is not too far from Chattanooga so we spent one day exploring some of the sights in that town including the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Cloudland Canyon is a nice relaxing place to visit in northern Georgia.

Cloudland Canyon Blog Post

Cloudland Canyon View

Large Overhanging Rock

• Union River Big Bear Campground, Silver City Michigan - Situated in the far western part of the Upper Peninsula, this private campground is pretty much surrounded by the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We stayed here for a week after completing our Habitat build in Marquette. It is a remote location that didn’t have any cell coverage for our devices but there was reasonable WiFi that worked in our rig. There are many hiking trails within the park and we take advantage of many of them. The main feature of this area are the numerous waterfalls - more of them than can be seen in the time we were here. We had found a decent guide that rated the falls on beauty and ease of getting to the viewing location and we managed to hit a great number of the better ones. The only real problem with this stop was coming in early July - the bugs were pretty bad at times. If you can time your visit for the fall colors, I bet the views would be spectacular and the bugs would be less of an issue.

First Porcupine Mountains Blog Post

Lake of the Clouds

Beautiful Bond Falls

• Hancock Recreation Area Campground, Hancock Michigan - This stop isn’t all that far from the Porcupine Mountains but there is so much to see and do in this area that it would be a challenge to attempt both areas from one campground. Situated on the Keweenaw Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior, this part of the UP was formerly a big copper mining area. Several of the old mines and facilities have been taken over by the National Park Service and offer a wide range of interesting tours. We did head up to Copper Harbor to explore an old lighthouse and fort. This area is known for some excellent mountain biking be we didn’t get a chance to try any bike trails and only got In minimal hiking since there were so many other things to see and do and we only had 5 nights in Hancock.

First Keweenaw Peninsula Blog Post

Shaft-Rock House at Quincy Mine

Eagle Harbor Light House

Incredible Stone Building in Calumet

• Camp Scholler Air Show, Oshkosh Wisconsin - Usually I don’t try to rank our tops picks for any given year, but this stop was so much fun that it was easily our favorite place of 2025 and rates up with the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the Lake Havasu Pyrotechnics Show as bucket list destinations. Similar to these other two, Oshkosh is only on the list because of the event that takes place every July - the EAA Airventure Show. There are around 12,000 mostly primitive camping sites in a 400 acre field so you’re not here for the camping experience. But for a full week, you can join in with roughly 100,000 other visitors each day and partake in everything aviation related. We are not at all into airplanes or flying but we still had a great time. There are 4 hour long airshows each afternoon and two nights during the week are nighttime airshows with planes, fireworks, laser lights and drones which were some of the most incredible events to behold. My blog post listed below will provide all the details about attending and what you’ll see while at Oshkosh. Add it to your bucket list!

Oshkosh Air Show Blog Post

Large Group of Warbirds During Air Show

Colorful Aerobatic Biplane

Nighttime Air Show Begins

• Bear Paw Campground Itasca State Park, Shelvin Minnesota - In mid August, we spent 9 nights camping inside Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota. The park’s claim to fame is being the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It’s one of the few places along this 2300 mile long river where visitors are encouraged to walk across from one side to the other. It’s only about 15 feet and ankle deep so it isn’t all that impressive of a feat. There are many miles of hiking trails to enjoy. The 11 mile paved bike path right out of the campground can be linked with a gravel one way wilderness drive for a great 17 mile loop around the lake.

Being there for an extended time, we were able to venture out of the park to see some other sights. The Heartland Trail a little southeast of camp was a wonderful bike ride out of the town of Walker. Possibly the highlight of the stop was a day trip to the town of Detroit Lakes to see the trolls. These 6 art installations are scattered all around the area and we found it is a full day to get them all in since most of them are not right at a parking area but require a bit of a walk. But the effort was worth it.

 First Itasca State Park Blog Post

Calm Waters of Lake Itasca Near Sunset

The First Few Feet of the Mighty Mississippi River

Chris Mimics Ronny Funny Face Troll

• Turtle River State Park, Arvilla North Dakota - Located 25 miles outside of Grand Forks is the small town of Gilby North Dakota. Small is an understatement - population ~240 people! The nearest campground was this state park about 10 miles away. Why did we want to go to this blip on the map in the middle of farm fields and not much else? That’s easy - geocaching. We had heard about Gilby on a geocaching podcast we routinely listen to and it sounded quite intriguing. When we put together our travel plans for Minnesota, I realized that we were only going to be 150 miles from Gilby and talked Chris into heading there. This place is known as the Disneyland of geocaching mainly because of one very creative cache hider named Trycacheus.

We spend 3 full days driving all over the backroads of Gilby in search of some of the most creative caches we’ve done over our 15+ years of geocaching. Most of the hides involved some sort of puzzle that must be solved in order to open the final cache container and each puzzle was very unique. Some were complicated and required a fair amount of thought while others were simply cute and fun to solve. Brainpower was used for most of them but a few required strength or throwing accuracy. In our 6 nights there, we found 71 caches with 50 of them having over 100 favorite points. We were there a couple weeks before some big geocaching event but that probably worked out in our favor so we could enjoy the time spent solving them in solitude. There were a few other things to see in the area but not many. So if you are a geocacher, this is a must do stop, otherwise you will likely skip this part of North Dakota.

 

 Blog Post from Gilby

Giant Anvil Weathervane is a Geocache

ET Phone Home Bike Cache

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife Cache

• Black Beach Campground, Silver Bay Minnesota - This stop wasn’t planned until a couple weeks before staying there. We only decided to consider checking out this part of Minnesota known as the “North Shore” after several people talked about how beautiful it is and a tour of the state should include seeing it. It’s an area that extends about 150 miles northeast of Duluth to the Canadian border near Grand Portage all along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We worked 4 nights into our schedule to check it out. There are a fair number of campgrounds along the route and some of the state parks looked nice but didn’t have availability during our timeframe. We picked Silver Bay because it was roughly halfway along the North Shore so we could easily explore in either direction.

There are numerous places to see with lots of waterfalls and other attractions. Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse were two of our favorites. One day was spent exploring all the way up to Grand Portage just before the border crossing. We did a beautiful hike there and found lots of places to stop at on our drive back. If you do make it to the area, you should really check out Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors. Had we only known to include the North Shore as we were planning our tour of Minnesota, we would have allotted more time to explore.

 Blog Post from Silver Bay

Split Rock Lighthouse Reflection

Gooseberry Falls State Park

Black Beach

Finally Saw the Northern Lights

• Top of the World Campground, Tellico Plains Tennessee - This was our last long stop before heading back to Florida for the winter. We really enjoy spending time in the Appalachian Mountains and doing so in the fall is even better. Having spent most of our time in these mountains on the North Carolina side near Asheville, we picked this out of the way campground to spend a week exploring. We found some quirky things to see in the area including tours of Mayfield Dairy and Sweetwater Valley farms where we saw robotic cow milking equipment in action.

There are many nice hikes to do in this area but it might be most famous for Cherohala Skyway - a 43 mile stretch of road from Tellico Plain TN to Robbinsville NC. It’s a very scenic drive through the mountains and we had (accidentally) timed our visit to be near peak autumn colors. This road ties into another drive called the Tail of the Dragon and many car enthusiasts come here from far away to drive these roads. The day we drove a section of it, there was an Aston Martin car club enjoying the drive - a total of 38 from vintage ones like James Bond drove to brand new models. They would have been much more fun to drive than the Jeep!

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

View from Our Campsite at Top of the World

River View Along Cherohala Skyway

Indian Boundary Lake TN

Below is a map showing all 435 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.

Click HERE to Open Interactive Google Map

We still haven’t made any plans for where 2026 will take us but I’m sure we will come up with something in the next couple months.

Chippewa Falls Wisconsin

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

After our five nights in northern Wisconsin, we have plans for 3 more stops in the state covering another 11 nights. Chippewa Falls, Wausau and Spring Green were our original destinations. But since most of the sightseeing would be out of our last stop in Spring Green, we originally planned on spending a week there and just two nights at each of the two early stops. But then Chris stumbled upon the fact Wisconsin accounts for nearly 50 to 60% of the world’s cranberry production and if we tweak our route slightly, we could actually attend an event where we could wade into a cranberry bog during harvest. That’s not something you get to do everyday day. In fact the event where this occurs only takes place one day a year. It took a bit of additional planning but since we hadn’t reserved any campsites at any of these places, we were able to let serendipity plan a route change and shift how many nights we spend at each spot.

We still have Chippewa Falls as our next stop. The plan is to stop at the Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds. There are 34 full hookup sites and being the end of the season and no events at the fairgrounds, we are optimistic about getting a spot. In fact with our rearranging our travel plans, we would be staying 4 nights here with our last night being the last night the campground is open for the season. It’s not quite 160 miles from Washburn to the fairgrounds and was primarily on lightly traveled roads. We arrive to find 4 other rigs already there, so we had plenty of sites to pick from.

After a very quiet night’s sleep, we set out to explore some of the area. Our first stop is the Irvine Park Zoo. We could have simply walked from our campsite to the zoo since it’s only about a mile away but we have other goals after the zoo so we take the short drive. The zoo isn’t huge but it is free.

Lemur

Coati

There are just a handful of buildings that house the animals. On our first pass, there were several exhibits that seemed to be missing the resident, but after time spent watching the unusually large rodent and a few birds, we saw a few more had come out of their inside homes.

Patagonian Mara

Bald Eagle Calling

Sleeping Barred Owl

The black bear was pacing back and forth in its outside pen. There are large thick glass windows between us and it. It wasn’t clear if the glass has a special coating so visitors are not easily seen by the bear or maybe it’s just oblivious to the large groups of people that stop by every day. The hyena had just been given some food and was chowing down on some chicken parts.

Black Bear Coming Towards Us

Hyena

There are also some bison in the park but they have a much larger outdoor field. There wasn’t a lot of activity but they were still interesting to watch.

Bison Relaxing

There are trails through the rest of the park and roughly 20 geocaches hidden here. We could have spent a great deal of time here if we wanted to. We opted to just do a couple of caches and explore some of the other sites located near the zoo portion of the park. By the time we got back to the car, the parking lot was full and hundreds of people were wandering around. There was some sort of event taking place, but we head back to the rig for lunch.

Log Cabin

Sunny Valley School

Another attraction within a mile of the campground is Leinenkugel Brewery. While not quite as old as Yuengling Brewery in Pennsylvania, this one is still quite old - founded in 1867 in Chippewa Falls. I can’t say I’ve ever had any of the beers produced here, we also enjoy a good brewery tour to see the inner operations of the factory. They offer tours of the facilities so we sign up for a 4 PM time slot.

Welcome to Leinenkugel's Brewery

I do remember seeing some of their beers displayed at the Coors tour we took in Colorado so we knew it was currently owned by Molson Coors. Although it was first acquired by Miller in 1988. They have a gorgeous bar and visitors center called the Lennie Lodge. We arrive early to check out the place in advance of our tour. They definitely have a large amount of Leinenkugel branded merchandise for sale - shirts, hats, steins. If you need a souvenir from your visit, you’ll find something here. The bar area was also very busy and they offer just about every beer they produce. Our tour includes a ticket for a “free” beer that can be used anytime. I ask if the tour will have tastings of some of their beers but am told no.

Huge Fireplace

Seating Area

Old Taps on Display

Our tour leader assembles the group and goes over the rules for the tour. Our group is almost a dozen people. We head across the bridge over a small creek and head into the factory area.

Bridge to Brewery

Beautiful Brewery Buildings

Admittedly it is a Sunday but we were surprised that there didn’t seem to be a lot of activity taking place. It was then that we found out that 8 months earlier, Molson Coors shutdown this original brewery and consolidated all of its production in Milwaukee. That was a bit of a surprise. Part of our enjoyment of this type of tour was to actually see the production lines and experience the sights, sounds and smells of beer being made.

Detailed Stonework

We head into a couple of the former production buildings. I guess the good news is that since the closure was fairly recent, the place still looks clean. Our tour guide mentions that they are still hoping that some production will be moved back but she didn’t sound optimistic.

Large Copper Kettle

Stainless Steel Kettles

Huge Holding Tanks

At the bottling line, there is a large room with windows overlooking the empty floor below. Had we been here a year ago, we would have gotten a good view of things. Now we are limited to watching how it used to look on a monitor.

Idle Bottling Line

Leinenkugel History

We head back into the Lennie Lodge and get a couple of beers and enjoy the atmosphere. I’ll admit we were rather disappointed with the tour. Not that it isn’t a nice facility, or the tour guide did a poor job, but if the website had simply referenced the fact the brewery was closed and we would be touring a vacant plant, we could have gone into with those expectations. I’ll be curious how long they continue to keep the tours going as the idle plant ages?

On Monday, we set off for one last visit to Ellsworth Creamery for our last shot at fresh cheese curds before we leave the area. Ellsworth is about 70 miles west of Chippewa Falls. That seemed like too long of a drive but we discovered that they have a satellite production plant in the town of Menomonie which is only half as far. Of course, picking up curds wouldn’t take long so we find a couple other places to explore in that direction and set off for another beautiful day in Wisconsin. Our first destination is Hoffman Hills Recreation Area about 20 miles east of camp.

Trail at Hoffman Hills

At roughly 700 acres, this place is pretty large and there are 9 miles of hiking trails. Of course what caught our attention were the 3 dozen or so geocaches hidden here. We realized that we could likely spend hours hiking here if we planned on finding them all. We study the maps and caches saw there was an 60 foot tower along one trail so we pick out a route that includes it and will be around 2 to 3 miles. That was one sturdy tower. Even Chris felt safe climbing to the top and what a view!

Sturdy Tower

Tower View

It turned out that the caches hidden here were not just lame hides but rather unique and creative. As we continued the trails, I found myself wanting to do “just one more” cache. Chris knows my thought process and was able to constrain me to just 11 finds and about 2.5 miles total.

A Fork in the Trail

Skull Hide

Next we head to the Ellsworth Creamery in Menomonie. This plant is about half the size of the one in Ellsworth proper with some outdoor seating areas.

Cow Sculptures at Creamery

Inside, there is a similar area for selling their cheese and curds. They actually do not have fresh curds from this plant brought out for retail sale like the other facility does but they do have the full assortment of flavors to choose from as well as a counter to purchase ice cream.

Local Products

Cheese Sales

But this place does have a hallway with windows looking into the production area which the original plant does not have. I guess they realized there was a desire for visitors to be able to see the curds being made, so they designed the plant and retail store accordingly. It would have been better if the viewing area was elevated more but it was still neat to see the big tubs of curds being stirred. I guess it was a good trade off and since the curds sold here, while not quite as fresh, they are way fresher than anything we will find outside of Wisconsin. We fill up the cooler with curds and get ice cream for dessert.

Milk Added to Large Tubs

Multiple Tubs

Curds Being Stirred

It was still early in the afternoon so we decided to head into Menomonie to walk around a little bit. Our first stop was at the public library. There is a geocache hidden inside that sounded interesting and has a high number of favorite points. Situated on the edge of a lake, this is one of the prettier libraries we have visited. To solve the cache, we need to ask the person at the front desk for a packet of information. Fortunately she knew about what we were asking for but told us she hadn’t needed to look for it in quite some time so it did take her a few minutes to locate. We sat down and went over the clues in the packet and tried to figure out what to make of it and how it would lead us to the actual cache. After a couple minutes, we came up with and idea and with a little more research, we had the call number we needed to go find the cache. As we left, we dropped off the packet at the front desk and she was surprised how quickly we solved it. It sounds like many people need to come ask for hints to solve. That was a fun cache of you are in Menomonie Wisconsin.

The University of Wisconsin - Stout campus is located in the downtown area. We used an Adventure Lab to help tour us around some of the area highlighting the lumber industry that was so important to this region. There are definitely some very neat old buildings around town.

Louis Smith Tainter House

Tour Group at Mabel Tainter Memorial Building

Closer View of Elaborate Stonework

As we walked along the lakefront area, we saw the boat ramp a few hundred feet offshore. Obviously this town has its own water skiing program but we are a bit late in the season for any shows to be taking place. Plus the water seemed to have a fair amount of algae or duck weed floating on the surface so it didn’t look too inviting.

I Love Wisconsin

Water Skiing Ramp

We ended up at one last old house that has been turned into a museum. It was here that we found yet another Paul Bunyan statue on the grounds. It’s not nearly as impressive as those we found in parts of Minnesota earlier this summer but it was nice to see his legacy covers a large swath of the upper Midwest.

Wilson Mansion

Paul Bunyan

One last stop in the area was to visit the Devil’s Punchbowl. It’s just a couple miles south of downtown and sounded interesting. There was a geocache hidden nearby as well. The parking area is above the geological feature found here with a long wooden staircase leading down the 60 feet to the floor of the natural rock amphitheater. The water levels were low enough that we could explore some of the area. When we went to look for the geocache, we were greeted with lots of no trespassing signs. I suspect that an adjacent landowner was tired of people coming onto his property we took the hint and headed back to camp.

Inside the Devil's Punchbowl

Back Up to the Parking Lot

With one last day in the area, we head into the nearby town of Eau Claire. It’s less than 15 miles southwest of Chippewa Falls but nearly 4 to 5 times larger. Carson Park looked to be a nice place to explore. It is a large peninsula sitting in a small lake just outside downtown Eau Claire. There is an Adventure Lab that tours the area as well as numerous geocaches.

It’s way more than simply a park with trails. The local railroad club has a half mile track running through one part of the park. It wasn’t in operation today but they do appear to have a nice setup. A baseball stadium is in the middle of the park and is where Hank Aaron made his minor league debut.

"High Five"

Railroad Station

Hank Aaron Debuted Here in 1952

Another part of the park has some old cabins and yet another Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues.

Historic Cabin

Another Paul and Babe Statue

Monkey In a Tough Spot

We spent nearly an hour exploring Carson Park and realized there was much more to see here but we had picked out a lunch stop in town and our hunger got the best of us.

Colorful Mural

Goat from Trash

We go to downtown Eau Claire and have lunch at Wigwam Tavern. From the outside, this place looks like a hole in the wall. It was only slightly better inside but just as the reviews stated, it was one of the best burgers I’ve had in quite some time. After lunch we continue into downtown. One of the first things we notice are how many bridges there are in town. The Chippewa River and Eau Claire Rivers both enter town and converge so there is the need to have lots of bridges.

Phoenix Park Footbridge

Former Train Trestle

Chris had also found a walking tour of downtown that shows off the various sculptures and murals. There were lots of cool things to see as we meandered around.

"Salmon Runner"

"Rock Dragon"

Beautiful Mural

There was also an Adventure Lab that highlighted some of the old homes along Grand Avenue. There were some beautiful homes in this part of town.

Preparing for Halloween

"Chicken Farmer"

Shadow Waves

This is also a college town although we didn’t make it to the heart of the campus but we did see a fair number of younger people wandering around.

Colorful Row Houses

We probably walked a couple of miles exploring.

"Mischief"

"Bear the Weight"

Makes You Dizzy

At one point I had seen a church up on a hill overlooking town and we tried to figure out how to get there. The first bridge we found that looked promising turned out to be a railroad bridge. But then we found a steep staircase going up the side of the hill that got us up to Sacred Heart of Jesus Church.

Sacred Heart of Jesus Church

We managed to find enough things to do and see in the area to cover the 4 nights we had planned for. I’m guessing the fairgrounds camping area is busier during the summer months but we found it to be very quiet with only one or two rigs camping there any night. In any event, we have successfully stalled our travels enough to move on to our next stop - Warrens Wisconsin, cranberry capital of the state.