Photo Blog with Waterfalls, Hiking, Outdoors, and other Adventures
2017 October mini-trip to visit central/northern Wisconsin to view fall foliage colors, hike state parks, and unlock waterfall achievements.
The final stop on this particular weekend tour was Aztalan State Park located east of Madison, WI. I had known going in that this particular site wasn’t “epic” in any sense outside of the cultural/historical appreciation aspect and wasn’t expecting much. Thankfully with that mindset I wasn’t disappointed. First – the rain. I finally remembered … Read more
Rain continued all night and into today with no sign of stopping. Thanks to a friend’s advice from Idaho to “be here now”, there was no way I could let it stop me. To begin my trip home, the next stop was Rib Mountain State Park. This is a popular ski destination and is heavily … Read more
Not sure I’ve mentioned this but waterfalls are pretty cool. The area around north central Wisconsin has plenty of them too. Next stop was the Dells of the Eau Claire River State Natural Area in Aniwa, WI (near Wausau). I didn’t know much about this location before visiting, but glad I stopped here. I parked … Read more
More heavy rains overnight continued the cold, wet conditions. But if I let a little rain stop me nothing would get done. So I pressed on and visited another small waterfall Rib Falls near Wausau, WI. Falls can be accessed from the adjacent Rib Falls County Park and is a very short hike but somewhat difficult … Read more
Decided to keep chasing waterfalls (no, I’m not doing that intentionally). Next stop was Grandfather Falls in Merrill, WI. Like many of the other state parks and popular destinations, this site also crosses with the Ice Age Trail – something I would like to section hike but that’s far in the future. The falls are … Read more
Continuing my rainy & cold fall trip, I detoured again for another side quest to visit Wisconsin waterfalls and located Spirit Falls in Tomahawk, WI. Falls are very easy to access – basically park at the nearby bar and walk 2 minutes to the Spirit River. Water is moving quite fast and seems relatively deep … Read more
Last winter I started dreaming up “side quests” for future journeys – mostly to help discover new places to visit, but also as a pseudo bucket-list to keep me moving. One dark and cold night, I was using my Google-fu and came across the concept of highpointing which is to visit all the highest points … Read more
Last night I was informed by park attendants while at Willow River State Park that rain would begin promptly at 6am today. Sure enough, heavy thunderstorms started at 6:15am. Thankfully I woke early and broke down camp quick. My next stop was not planned – more of an “I’m bored and tired of driving in rain” … Read more
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’ve been quite distracted with life & other adventures this past month. Since I’m stuffed with turkey and cannot move much, figured now is a good time for catch-up on my posting backlog. Stay tuned, I have about 20 new places to share in the pipeline! Back to this post originally from … Read more
Since one of the main goals on this journey was to observe fall colors, the next choice of Mill Bluff State Park was easy. The park contains several large sandstone bluffs, and the main Mill Bluff can be climbed to look out across the forest. Amazing to consider thousands of years ago this was a … Read more