Over the River and Through the Woods to the Eau Claire River Trail
I’m glad I remembered to put on some sunscreen since the beautiful sunny skies would have left some skin damage with my longer than expected outing.
I have to admit, I didn’t even know about the Eau Claire River Trail until a couple of weeks ago. But I immediately put it on my list as a place to explore. Plus the Mountain Bay Trail was already on my list, so I could kill two birds with one stone on this outing. Little did I know about all the other things I’d discover on this ride!
Part One: Cedar Creek Trail
I started out from home on the Cedar Creek Trail, which as I described in my earlier blog post, I have used thousands of times to cross from Rib Mountain into Rothschild over the Wisconsin River. Usually though I had a sense of urgency, but today I had a completely free afternoon - and good thing too as this trip ended up having several unplanned stops!
Part Two: Improptu Visit while Transversing Rothschild and Weston
I didn’t see as many people out and about as I had expected, but I stopped when I saw a familiar face. We were both happy to run into each other, chatted a bit (at six foot distance) and continued on.
Although I have explored most of Rothschild over the years, I had done far less exploring in Weston. I got really excited when I realized I’d be going over the Birch Street bike & pedestrian bridge for the first time. I had always envisioned a defined bike & pedestrian path on the north side of Hwy 29 and was surprised the bridge just dumped into residential streets. Glad I didn’t go out of my way after all to explore this (lack of) trail sooner.
Part Three: Free bikes!
I was impressed with this bridge which connected back to community .
While weaving through Weston, I happened to pass a house with two free bikes. I stopped and found one was the exact size bike my oldest daughter needed, and more importantly color - pink. Her current pink bike had its seat as high up as possible and was clearly too small, but we couldn’t convince her to ride her “bumblebee bike",” a yellow and black bike, which was the appropriate size for her. I immediately looked around and there was no place to stash the bikes, to get home and drive back. So I immediately called my husband who gladly packed up the kids to claim a free bike. The kids were excited for their first car ride in weeks (since our last ski outing), but more importantly for a new bike. Now that my oldest daughter would relinquish her current bike, our next daughter would inherit it and get her first pedal bike (she has mastered her strider bike and is ready to conquer pedals).
Part Four: Reaching the Eau Claire River Trail
A beautiful rock greets hikers and bikers as they enter either end of the park.
Gaska Park has a bit of singletrack that would be a lot better on a real mountain bike instead of my commuter bike!
After weaving through residential streets in the general northeast direction, I managed to find the Mountain Bay Trail Trailhead. This little jaunt on the Mountain Bay Trail was enough for me to satisfy me (I much prefer twists and turns on singletrack trails over straight, flat rail-to-trails).
I was now at my destination, the Eau Claire River Trail. I thoroughly enjoyed paralleling the Eau Claire River and going over six bridges. It was good to see lots of families out exploring the trail too. I made a lollipop on the trail after popping out to the neighbor streets and did a final pass along the river. It would be worth a trip back to see all the brown transformed to vibrant green in a month or two.
Part 4: Back on the Mountain Bay Trail
Although the entire route could be a out-and-back, I soon deviated when I discovered the Mountain Bay Trail continued slightly west past the trailhead (who would have thought?). I did rejoin my prior route rather quickly and noted the pink bike was no longer there.
Part 5: Back to explore Gaska Park
Before setting out I hadn’t put much planning into the route, but wanted to spend a little more time in Gaska Park since there were some trails at the park, especially since I hadn’t ridden any dirt yet this year. I had skied on these trails after early season snowfalls years ago and had discovered a surprisingly high amount of trails packed into the 48 acre park, enough to keep me on the trails for nearly an hour at a pop.
Since I had already planned to be back home a while ago, I meandered the trails and decided it would be worth making the shorter trip (possibly with kids) to rediscover the park without snow. Especially since there’s a bit of singletrack and it would be much better on a real mountain bike. It would be perfect for our kids to get their first ride on the trails before singletrack bike trails open elsewhere. Also, it may be worthwhile trading off kid duties with the hubby if the kids opted to use the playground during future visits. We had done this at Sylvan Hill Bike Park last summer several times and worked great - plus this park has a bathroom!
Part Six: Back Home
This was truly a Sunday afternoon stroll. The best part was arriving home and seeing my oldest daughter whirring around on the driveway on her new bike. I was hoping my daughter wouldn’t notice the kickstand, as I was hoping I could use for my own bike, but the first words out of her mouth were “Look mom, a kickstand and it goes up on its own when I start riding! I guess I’ll have to find my own.
If you want to read more
It’s been three weeks since I’ve been in a vehicle (with no plans in the near future either), but I’ve ventured out of the house many times - sometimes on foot, others on rollerskis, and like this outing on a bike. Our area has lots of options to discover on foot or wheels!
If you’re looking for more ideas of bike & pedestrian routes in the Wausau area - check out the Cedar Creek Trail in Rothschild and 51/29 and Hwy R loop in Rib Mountain which I wrote about in earlier blog posts.
If you have others you’d like me to write about, please post your ideas below.