Chippewa Falls Wisconsin

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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.