Wisconsin - Horicon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge - and a WATER TRAIL!!

Another weekend, another COVID 19 “friendly” trip. I’m keeping things close to home, and limiting my exposure to people, but I still want to explore! This time, I decided to go to the Horicon Marsh. Its only an hour from home, but I’ve never been there! Shame on me!

The Horicon Marsh area is home to the Horicon Marsh State Recreational Area, as well as the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge. The National Park Service operates a beautiful Education & Visitor Center, but it was closed due to the virus.

I parked at the Visitor Center, and even though it was closed, there were some signs outside that indicated the location of various hikes. Pro tip – TAKE A PHOTO OF THE SIGN WITH THE HIKES!! This has come in SO handy as I have traveled. It is also better for the environment than carrying around all the paper copies. I ended up taking the Intermuehle Island hike. It was great!

The Intermuehle hike is only about a mile in length, but it starts out with my favorite thing – a BOARDWALK!! I normally am a sucker for boardwalks, and this was no different, but the amount of waterfowl that also use this boardwalk made it rather a challenge to navigate in some areas.

The boardwalk takes you to Intermuehle Island, and the park rangers here have taken the book “The Lorax”, laminated each page, and tied them to trees along the way. What a cool way to keep a child occupied during the hike! I also loved the wildlife blind that was placed in the woods.

After that hike, I took a ride up to the National Wildlife Refuge, but again, it was closed. Lots of signs around the building, but I didn’t stick around long, because there was a police officer sitting in the parking lot (the only other car), and it made me nervous.

Then… I went to find a boat launch, for the WATER TRAIL!! Yes, this location has a marked water trail, to use with kayaks, canoes or whatever. I had along my daughter’s blow up kayak, and I had never used it before.

I found the site and started my time-lapse to catch me “struggling” with the new kayak. It turned out to be a boring video, since the kayak went together pretty well, and I was in the water relatively quickly. The trail was beautiful, but I was just slowly going down, and didn’t run into any interpretive signs or anything. I was concerned that if I took a blow-up kayak too far downstream, I wouldn’t be able to get back Upstream. It was a good call because I was sore the next day.

I did one more short hike, closer to town, then set off to see what was in the town of Horicon. I wasn’t very hungry, because I had taken the campervan with me, and I was stocked with granola bars and such. BUT – when you see a Brat Fry in a small town in Wisconsin, you MUST stop. I got a brat, from a guy that didn’t think twice about putting a slice of cheese on it for me, and I ate outside and supported a local organization at the same time. YUM!

In all, it was a nice trip to the Horicon Marsh. I’m surprised I hadn’t been there before, but it is now being added to my list of close, and incredibly cool locations for a hike! I even stopped at a cheese shop in a small town on the way back. What could be better?