A Fall Adventure in Wausau Wisconsin

Every weekend in fall, my husband and I like to travel around the state of Wisconsin in search of fall color.  For our first weekend, we drove all the way up north and into the UP to see some color.  If you missed that post, you can find it HERE.  This past weekend, we drove two hours east to Wausau, Wisconsin where the colors were reported at 55%.  

Just like the weekend before, it rained.  It didn't rain all summer, but Mother Nature decides to rain everyday and every weekend in the fall.  😢.  We decided to make the best of it and just readjusted our plans as we knew it would clear up a bit in the afternoon.

Downtown Wausau

Since it was raining, we decided to tour downtown Wausau.  I've seen pretty pictures of their historic downtown and always wanted to check it out, so nows my chance.

Wausau has a small, maybe 2-3 block historic area.  There are mostly dining establishments, and a few clothing stores, so we didn't pop into any of them except the one below:  "Evolution in Design".

This was the coolest store ever!  I was mostly enamored with the decor of the store than their products.  I loved walking around checking every little nook and cranny.  It appeared to be an old store front house built in the late 1800's...

Every section of this store is intricately and creatively decorated from the painted floors all the way up to the painted ceilings.

After exploring the downtown shops we headed into the nearby neighborhood as we kept seeing so many gorgeous old churches in the distance.

The neighborhood has huge, mature trees bursting in color!

The Town Square had a fabulous modern bandshell.

The many restaurants had lots of outdoor dining options.

The clerk at the "Evolutions in Design" store told us to stop in "Sugar' n Spice" because they had great cheesecake.  I was so thrilled she recommended this place, because this was not only the best cheesecake I've had in my life, but it was also the best dessert I ever had in my life.  

The stores sell large cheesecake cupcakes for around $6.00 each or mini ones for $1.50 each.  We chose a large chocolate cheesecake cupcake and split it.  It was AMAZING!

The decor of this sweet shop was amazing too.  I just loved how glamorous it was!  I told my husband, if I am ever in Wausau again, I will ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS stop here for cheesecake!

It was still raining so we stopped for lunch.  I picked "Red Eye Brewing Company" because it was rated Wausau's #1 restaurant on Trip Advisor.  It's an "Artisan Food" restaurant, so all the food on the menu was "Weird".  I absolutely loved it, but my meat and potatoes husband was out of his comfort zone.  When it came time to order, he decided not to order anything and the waitress could tell why so she said "We have pizza too", to which I replied "Yes, but they are all weird to him too", then she kindly said, "We could make any pizza you want".  So then hubby's eyes lit up and said "How about just plain pepperoni and sausage?"  and once they brought that out to him, and not any weird ingredient pizzas, he was happy. 😀 

I ordered a "Fried Chicken BLT" and it was delicious!

Wausau River Walk

After lunch, the rain finally subsided so we headed over the Wisconsin River to do the riverwalk.  I have no idea how many miles this riverwalk is, but let me tell you, it is HUGE.  We couldn't even do it in one day (but we could have been a little worn out from walking downtown all morning) so we broke it up in two chunks.  We did the walk starting from Bridge Street, through the entire Whitewater Park, plus Brunet Island...then we had to walk all the way back to our car...so it was a lot of walking.  You can bike on this river walk, but we wanted to see all the islands too, and that would have been difficult to do with bikes.

At the start of the riverwalk near bridge street was this beautiful canopied viewing deck of the Wisconsin River.

On the opposite side was this pedestrian bridge that had the loveliest waterfall.  I've never seen anything like this before.  We thought it was so pretty.

There are multiple bridges on this walk that take you across to three islands which have trails and points of historic interest.  The first island we visited was Barker Stewart Island.  Here we learn this island was where they stored all the lumber back in the sawmill/lumber days when they used the Wisconsin River to haul the wood down river.

Our next stop on the river walk was the White Water Park.  Oh my gosh!  This place was amazing!  I've never seen anything like it before!  It's a professional racing course for canoe and kayaking.  It was so much fun watching these brave men and women hone their craft.

Hubby watching the kayakers from the deck above.

I couldn't believe this course for kayakers to practice and compete was located right in the heart of a small city.  Be sure to check out the video at the end of this post to see them in action.

When the railroad tracks were built in Wausau, they stopped moving lumber via the Wisconsin river.

After watching the kayakers for a while, we started walking back on the river walk.  It continued into a lovely paved path through the woods, with the Wisconsin River on our right.

By now, we were getting pretty sore and tired and realized we had to walk all the way back to our car, so we decided to call it a day and see the second half of the river walk tomorrow.

                                 Picnic Island

The next morning the sun was out!  We were so excited! We hadn't seen the sun in over a week.  We headed over to "Riverside Park" to hike the end of the river walk we missed the day before.  We hiked the trail again for just a bit before a bridge took us to "Picnic Island".

This was such a quiet, beautiful little island.  We loved how the colorful foliage of the trees was mirrored in the water.

                                  Oak Park

Next we jumped back in our car again (are you noticing how long this trail is if we keep having to jump back in our car?) and drove to Oak Park, from here we crossed another bridge to the "Isle of Ferns Island"

This island had the most beautiful bridge of them all!  It was made of stone and just dripped with moss.

There is a trail that goes all the way around the island, which we took.  It was rustic, and we see how the island got its name as there were a lot of ferns.

Rib Mountain State Park

After we finished the Wausau River Walk we headed over to Rib Mountain State Park.  Of course we had to climb their insanely tall viewing tower to see the surrounding landscape filled with fall color.

Rib Mountain has so many rocks and boulders.  Tourists love to climb them.

We only took one hike, the "Red Trail" as we were short on time.  It led us to another beautiful lookout.

Hubby enjoying some of the parks large rock formations.

 After we finished the "Red Trail" we got back in our vehicle to head home.  We had been to this park many times before that's why we kind just popped in this day to see the fall colors.  You can read about our other adventures to this park HERE and HERE.

And now, be sure to watch the video below to see this amazing whitewater course right in downtown Wausau, Wisconsin!

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

Celebrating Fall: Back To Rib Mountain

I've been taking a short break from my Missouri Vacation Travel Posts to cover our fall adventures in our home state of Wisconsin.  This will probably be my last "Celebrating Fall" post as winter appears to be arriving this Friday bringing our first killing frost and snowfall. 😢

Last month my husband and I stopped at Rib Mountain  while on a long fall drive.  We only had about an hour to spend there, but became so enchanted with the place, we planned on coming back to explore more.  This past weekend we got that chance!  The weather wasn't the best, it actually hasn't been the best all fall.  It seems all week long the sun is shining and then it rains on the weekends.  But knowing this was probably our last chance to see fall colors, out the door we went!

Most of the leaves had already fallen as it was past peak at Rib Mountain, but it was still very pretty because of the gorgeous carpet of color on the forest floor.

The first time we were at Rib Mountain we went up the observation tower and took one short trail near the tower.  This time, we wanted to hike the Turkey Vulture Trail for it looked like it had fabulous views.  The problem was you couldn't drive to the start of this trail and park nearby.  There are only three parking lots in this park, and none of them are near this trail.  You have to hike three, yes three separate trails BEFORE you even get to the Turkey Vulture Trail.  Yikes!

It was a little chilly and overcast and we even got rained on for a little bit.  That wasn't fun, as we were deep in the woods and no where near any shelter.

The forest was absolutely gorgeous!  I loved all the birch trees!

Even though my husband and I are very experienced hikers, we got lost at least three times prior to the Turkey Vulture Trail.  A huge part of it was that leaves covered up the trail so it was hard to see where the path was.  Another part was not enough trail markers or poor placement of trail markers.  If it wasn't for using our common sense and knowing how to read a map and our directional abilities, we'd probably still be out there! 🤣

But all the frustration of getting lost and having to back track multiple times was worth it, because eventually we found this!

An amazing scenic view of an old quartzite trail and the landscape beyond.

I took this short panoramic video of the quarry.

There was a path from the viewpoint above that led us to the utmost top of the quarry.  We had to climb up the small edge of rocks on the left side of the photo below.

I must admit, I was scared up here.  See me clinging to the side of the rock behind the tree on the right side of the picture.  The wind was so gusty, there were times I thought it would knock me right over!

There was still a lot of color, even though we were past peak.  I can only imagine what it might have looked like a few weeks earlier!

After looking at the view from the top of the cliff, we hiked over to the Turkey Vulture Trail.  I couldn't believe we were finally on this trail!  It seemed to take forever to get there.  We literally had to take three trails to get here:  The Blue Trail, The Red Trail, and finally The Quarry Trail.

Thankfully, the Turkey Vulture Trail was very easy to follow because it's a large, wide road (not open to traffic, but open to State Park cars).   It was also completely covered with leaves, but when the path is that wide, it's impossible to miss.

The Turkey Vulture Trail runs on the opposite side of the tall cliff, through the woods, and alongside scenic views of the area.

Previous park visitors created messages using rocks from the quarry.  The large heart must have taken a very long time.

 

The rock formations were very beautiful and impressive.

This video was taken of the Quarry view as seen from the Turkey Vulture Trail.

It's really easy to get inside the bottom of the trail.  You don't have to climb down into it.  The Turkey Vulture Trail leads you right to it.

It was a long walk from the entrance all the way to the inside of the quarry.  I wanted to walk the entire distance to get a realistic idea of how big this quarry was.

 You also see views like this on the Turkey Vulture Trail.  It's on the opposite side of the quarry.

By now we were getting pretty tired so we decided to take a short cut called Dynamite Trail, which basically connects the Turkey Vulture Trail to the Homestead Loop Trail.

It's called Dynamite Trail because it holds the remains of a dynamite storage facility.

It probably wasn't the best idea to take this short cut, because we ended up getting lost again. 🤣  This time, it wasn't near as bad as the first time, as we found a marker quickly.  See how the leaves are just covering the forest floor?  See the marker to the left in the distance?  If you miss one of those markers, you will find yourself off the path quickly!

 I loved this moss growing below the birch trees.

 All the birch trees were one of our favorite sights on this hike.

 The Homestead Loop Trail was absolutely breath-taking.  It is called that because the remains of an old homestead are on this trail.  We were simply awestruck by the beauty of the forest on this trail.  This trail travels through a diverse hemlock stand, offering a unique and magical experience from the rest of the trails in the park.  If you're lucky enough to visit this park, don't miss this trail!  You won't regret it.

 I was blown away by all these ferns growing amongst the rock on this north facing wall.  So pretty.

It took us four hours from start to finish to cover these four trails.  Of course, we were hiking slow because the ground floor was wet and slippery and we stopped a lot to take pictures and make videos.      My husband and I said we only hiked a total of 3.5 miles, but my body felt more like we hiked 10 or more!

When we were done we had a picnic lunch on the top of Rib Mountain overlooking the city of Wausau.  It was only around 2:00 p.m. when we finished lunch and there were so many more trails I wanted to explore, but my body was saying "No, you've had enough for today".  So sadly, I got back into the car to drive the 2.5 hours home promising to return next year.  Maybe we'll get a hotel room for the weekend, so we don't have to try and hike all the remaining trails in a single day.

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!