Touring Coulee Country

They were feasting on something. Even with our binoculars, we couldn't tell. Whatever it was, it had certainly captured the attention of eight of the neighborhood's bald eagles. Some were on the spit of sand feeding on their prize. Others watched from dead snags 50 or more feet above the backwater.

We were at the north end of the Great River State Trail, skirting the 6,200-acre Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). We had ridden this rail trail from the town of Trempealeau eight or so miles to Perrot State Park and continued cranking the pedals slowly onto the refuge's Wildlife Drive.

It was an incredible 80-degree day in early spring. The peepers were going wild in the swampland around us, halting their chorus when we neared them, picking up where they left off after we had passed.

We had spotted woodpeckers, blue herons, egrets, a solitary swan and sandhill cranes as we rode, but the eagles were a rare bonanza of raptors. Both my wife, Kathy, and I sensed that there must be a nest nearby, and sure enough, around the next bend, we spotted it. It was an awesome piece of construction wedged in the top of a dying tree. It measured 6 feet across and was deep enough to hide all but the head of one bird, possibly sitting on its eggs. Its mate stood guard on the nest's edge.

Having filled our "wow" quota for the day, we rode back to our car on the broad gravel trail, where we racked up the bikes and drove to Perrot State Park to take a hike to Brady's Bluff, a 520-foot peak with sweeping views across the Mississippi River Valley.

When the glaciers fanned down across Wisconsin, they leveled most of the state. But the southwest corner of Wisconsin was left untouched. Called the Driftless Area, it is home to steep sided ravines, called "coulees," towering bluffs and meandering streams. The ride to Trempealeau NWR was our second stop on a spring foray into this unique corner of Wisconsin.

From Madison, we had driven to Wyalusing State Park at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. Wyalusing is 2,674 acres of wetlands, bluffs, hiking and biking opportunities, and views down into a braid of waterways where the Wisconsin flows into the mighty Mississippi. As you hike the Sentinel Ridge Trail, you find yourself at eye level with turkey vultures as they wheel and soar in the thermal updrafts.

The trail can be accessed from a parking lot near the Wisconsin Ridge Campground. A short but very steep spur trail led us to Treasure Cave, where we climbed a set of stairs more aptly described as a ladder to the mouth of the cave. Feathers and bits of bone littered the broad opening in the bluff. Within that chamber a long sloping 18-inch-high tunnel led, we supposed, into the very belly of the earth. We hiked among effigy mounds that were first built more than 2,000 years ago. The 1.6-mile trail terminates near the boat landing in a network of sloughs that are perfect for flatwater canoeing.

When you're ready to get on your bike again, you can choose from 10 miles of singletrack loops and combinations thereof in the park. If you're in good shape, you'll probably not have a lot of problems on these short loops, says Colby Thor Waller in Mountain Biking Wisconsin. The descriptively named "Cathedral Tree Drive" can be combined with the Mississippi Ridge Trail for an on-road and singletrack combination loop. We were breaking in our recently acquired hybrids, so we didn't venture off-road.

After a night in Stoddard, we set off for our eagle adventure, then turned back east into the heart of Coulee Country, the Kickapoo Valley. Locals call the Kickapoo "the crookedest river in the world," and having canoed it, I concur. It's navigable from its source near Wildcat Mountain State Park to its confluence with the Wisconsin River in Wauzeka and canoe liveries abound along the river. But this particular trip was all about the bike and the hike, and we came to the Kickapoo with plans to do both.

The hike would be at Wildcat Mountain State Park, located just south of Ontario in Vernon County. We had enjoyed its breathtaking views but hadn't ever explored its miles of trail. We stepped out onto the Old Settlers' Trail, a 2.5-mile loop that begins at the park office on top of Wildcat Mountain itself, then winds down steeply into the forest circling artfully eroded sandstone outcroppings. Before entering the silent valley, we stopped at an overlook. Ontario sat peacefully below, its white steepled church a centerpiece of the village.

As we got deeper into the bottomland, recent pine plantations were evident. The trail leads to a little creek and wooden footbridge. The trail, it's said, was used by early settlers and more recently by farmers. Now the silence was broken only by the call of a red-bellied woodpecker or two. The trail meanders around in these lowlands, leading to a clearing - a one-time farm, no doubt, but now left to the coons, deer, turkeys and squirrels - before finally heading back. On the top of the "mountain" again, we drank in the view of the Kickapoo and its tributaries.

I had first read of the Kickapoo Cowpath Tour in Phil Van Valkenberg's book Mountain Bike! Wisconsin some 10 years ago. The one time I tried to ride it, it was a rainy midsummer day and the road out of Soldier's Grove looked forbidding. So I bagged the ride and decided to try another day. That other day finally came this spring on this trip.

We had plans to visit old friends in Gays Mills, so we didn't have time to ride the whole 25 miles of this tour, which begins in Soldier's Grove and finishes up in La Farge. So we decided to do the two ends of the trail and leave the middle for another trip.

The route took us along the Kickapoo River on mostly gravel and minimally paved roads across the river from the main north-south thoroughfare, State Highway 131. Traffic was practically nonexistent, so we ambled along enjoying the views of rugged outcroppings and the peacefully flowing Kickapoo. Both the northern and southern stretches that we rode were basically flat with a couple of hills in the southern section that got our hearts working a bit harder.

We were having trouble following the directions in Van Valkenberg's ride guide, mostly due to signs not being where we needed them. But we used the river and State 131 as guides, trying to stay as close to the river bottom as possible and always keeping the highway across the river from us.

We then ferried our bicycles north again to Viola, a sleepy village of some 600 people, where we got on the Cowpath, with its gently rolling terrain, dearth of four-wheel traffic and the omnipresent rugged outcroppings rising around us. We cruised into La Farge, home to Organic Valley, the largest independent cooperative of organic farmers in the United States. There is also an outlet store in La Farge, where you can satisfy your organic needs.

Reaching Organic Valley's corporate headquarters to visit a friend gave us our toughest cardio workout of the day. It's situated on a big hill outside of town. On July 24-25, the grounds will be the site of the Kickapoo Country Fair, which focuses on sustainable living, green building and organic farming, while providing festival staples of food and music.

It was late afternoon when we got back in the saddle and rode back to the car, and headed for Viroqua for our reunion at the Driftless Cafe for pizza, beer and good company. Definitely worth a stop if you're in the valley.

Early on the final day of our trip, we drove north from Viroqua through Cashton, the center of a large Amish community. In the fields, five-horse teams pulled plows through black earth as the farmers prepared their fields for planting. The road was busy with black covered buggies. For a half-mile stretch, we listened to the clip-clop of horseshoes as we slowed behind one of the buggies. We turned east in Cashton and headed for Wilton, where we took the bikes down for our final ride of the trip. It would be a perfect conclusion.

Ten miles out, then 10 back would give us a good taste of the first hiking and biking rail trail in the nation: the Elroy-Sparta Trail. Now it's one link in a 100-mile chain of rail trails connecting Reedsburg in south-central Wisconsin to the Trempealeau NWR, where not long ago, we had met that family of eagles.

It would also take us through two of the trail's three signature features: the tunnels, including the 3,200-foot-long No. 3. Plans don't always work out, however. A couple of miles into the ride, we arrived at the entrance to Tunnel No. 2 and the massive wooden doors were shut up tight. We had arrived too early in the season, apparently, so we tucked our tails under our saddles and rode back to Wilton.

I had one last fix for our sprocket fever, a nice ride that we could still squeeze in on the way home. We headed to Richland Center and parked in the Wal-Mart lot just east of town. The Pine River Trail passes right behind the store. I'd ridden this trail before. If it had been later in the spring, the bird life would have been profuse, with sandhill cranes bugling in the flat valley, herons stalking the marshes and goldfinches dropping from the trees in swooping flashes of yellow. The crushed limestone trail goes some 15 miles from Richland Center to Lone Rock, although we chose to turn around in Gotham, about 10 miles out from Richland Center, since the remainder of the ride parallels noisy U.S. Highway 14.

We rolled across a dozen wooden bridges. This early in the spring, wildlife was not too abundant yet, but it was a peaceful cruise. In Gotham, we stopped for just one cold one, then wound our way south on village streets to a boat landing on the Wisconsin, where we sat and watched the river flow past sandbars and wooded shoreline. For the return trip, we opted to take the county road that follows the shoulder of the valley and offers some great views of the Pine River Valley and rail trail below.

To find this route, go west out of Gotham on State Highway 60 and watch for County Road TB about a mile or so down the road. Turn right onto County TB. Go north to the small settlement of Twin Bluffs, continue on County TB to Sawmill Road, make a right and soon you'll cross the bike trail, where you can turn left and head back to your vehicle. A third option described in Mountain Bike! Wisconsin follows Country Road O north from State 60, which offers an aerobic workout.

Day was turning to evening as we bungeed the bikes to the rack for the last time. U.S. Highway 14 led us home. For all the exploring we had squeezed into just a few days, we had barely scratched the surface of what's out there in Coulee Country.