Kevin Revolinski - Backroads & Byways of Wisconsin

BACKROADS & BYWAYS OF

WISCONSIN

Drives, Day Trips & Weekend Excursions

SECOND EDITION

KEVIN REVOLINSKI

THE COUNTRYMAN PRESS

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Back cover photograph Kevin Revolinski

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To my grandfather, Louie Girga: the drive was fine.
The last 10 miles or so were downhill and so I didnt have to push.

T here is no way to thank everyone who has contributed in some way to this guidebook. Putting together a book like this involves amassing a mountain of tiny details, all coming from a thousand helpful souls who drop a name, share a secret, or point a finger in the right direction.

Thanks goes out to Kim Grant for her editorial guidance, understanding, and pep talks. I owe much to Matt Forster and Lisa Sacks for their careful editing. I am forever a fan of the Wisconsin State Parks and all the marvelous people who manage and care for them. Cheers to Kristin, Erica, and Marty for the occasional Google hotline. Who needs a Blackberry anyhow? Thanks to Peung for being the occasional copilot or at least phoning it in and to Marty Statz for additional copilot duties and a true appreciation for those roads less traveled. Thanks to Traci, Rob, Michelle, L.A., Andrea, and of course Debbie for making Door County seem less like work and more like the fun and games we all (wrongly) imagine travel writing to be. Hats off to Jon Jarosh for being the walking encyclopedia of Door County and for capturing in photos my attempts to drop-kick my camera for being uncooperative. Couch providers for this journey include Erica, Alexandra, and Veronica, as well as Riz, Risa, Sidra, and Ninathe latter actually gave up her room for the cause, and I am humbled by her 7-year-olds generosity. Im grateful to Tom Huhti for commiseration and advice, Andy Larsen and Sarah Soczka for their help with places to stay and many good recommendations, and Burt DeHaven for his Minocqua knowledge. Blessed are the cheesemakers (or the makers of dairy products in general), whose curds fought back hunger when the clock didnt want me to take time for lunch, and a nod to DeLorme for making a pretty darn good road atlas. I have my parents to thank for my appreciation of local attractions; those family vacations in faraway destinations and big cities such as Wausau and Green Bay will always make me smile.

And last, I want to express my unending gratitude and admiration for my late grandfather, Louie Girga. His door was always open when I needed a place to stay, and we were never short on bacon. The questionable conditions of my cars over the years were also a great source of amusement for the both of us. As far back as my very earliest memories, all backroads and byways have led to the farm in Moquah. As he was fond of saying of others he admired, so I will say of him: He was a real prince of a guy. He will be sorely missed.

T he beauty of Wisconsin has been a long time coming. The landscape is a geological symphony consisting in part of rock outcrops and lava flows over a billion years old, layers of sediment laid down when a warm sea covered the land millions of years ago, and thousands of years of grinding glaciers, the last advance of which only melted away about 10,000 years ago. The many lakes and rivers, the sculpted hills and gorges, and the rocky deposits such as the moraines are the beneficiaries of the Ice Age; the lands untouched by ice this last time around, known as the Driftless Area, show no lakes, but rolling hills and towering bluffs instead. All across this spreads a mix of farmland, prairie, wetlands, forest, and savanna giving a home to a cornucopia of flora and fauna, much of which remains today or has been restored.

The area was inhabited even before the last glacier started its retreat and shows evidence of human occupation before 8000 BC in such places as the rock shelter at Natural Bridge State Park. Other cultures followed, including mound builderswhose effigy mounds are spread throughout the stateand a variety of other Woodland Indians. Today, 11 native nations remain in Wisconsin, including the Ojibwe, the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), and the Potawatomi.

The French were the first Europeans to arrive, and they explored the lakes and riverways and set up a fur trade with the Native Americans. Great waterways such as the Fox, Wisconsin, and Mississippi Rivers functioned as the main thoroughfares connecting the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Both the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers function as backbones of two of this guidebooks chapters.

Wisconsin didnt become a state until 1848, but it saw a rush of miners just before that and lumberjacks not long after. In the 19th century, a wide variety of European pioneers brought with them their own customs and culture, creating communities that reminded them of the homes they left behind. Thus we have the Swiss communities in Green County, the Cornish heritage of Mineral Point, and, in many places, the German tradition of beer.

WA-SWA-GONING IS A GREAT PLACE TO LEARN ABOUT THE WAYS OF THE OJIBWE OF YESTERYEAR

Within these pages are 14 routes through some of the loveliest portions of the state; each one of them offers a different look. Anyone who has ever seen the Great Lakes will immediately recognize that Lakes Superior and Michigan are not rowboat fishing holes but rather great northern seas; many a ship has suffered the wrath of lake storms, and their tragic wrecks are chronicled in museums or by lakeside memorials. The Great Lake shorelines are pure and beautiful, and the colors and character of the waters can shift suddenly with each lakes moody temperament.

Mineral Point may be the quintessential 19th-century town, but there are many other towns and villages around the state that have preserved or restored portions of the architecture and ambience of their yesteryear heydays. Strolls down their Main Streets put the traveler in touch with the simple life of a small town.

The work of the glaciers is something to behold. The entire Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive in Chapter 7 is a tribute to the massive movement of earth and stone, but there are plenty of outwash plains and scattered moraines in other areas, and the various segments of the 1,000-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail gives hikers a tour of the edge of the last stopping point of the glaciers. The bluffs of Devils Lake and the Baraboo Hills are reminders of the power of stone; even the Wisconsin River and the glaciers had to work around them.