Wisconsin Hiking Trail Finder

This site is designed to provide quick, organized access to informative Wisconsin hiking websites. Hiking enthusiasts like you have created excellent web pages on Wisconsin hiking trails -- then posted those pages on free web servers -- only to be ignored by search engines. The purpose of this site is to provide a way to find these personal hiking pages, and make your hiking trail and backpacking research easier.

• Apostle Islands National Lakeshore National Park Service hiking page for Apostle Islands. Decent site, good stuff if you click around.



• Astico Park provides over a mile of hiking trails; most of which follow the Crawfish River shoreline.



• Devil's Lake hiking page. Informative, good laundry list of trails with descriptions, other info. Includes a couple of maps. Lots of good hiking here.



• Dodge County State Park hiking trail information.



• General Page Wisconsin Valley Hiking by Andrew Novak. Personal insights, descriptions and photos. Fun site.



• General Page intro page for Wisconsin from Trailmonkey.com. Links to a lot of valuable trail info. Good one if you want to "browse." Or, stay here and browse for awhile, then go to trailmonkey. Whatever. Link fixed 9/20/07.



• General Page This is the Hunt Fish Camp Wisconsin.com site; dedicated to the outdoor lifestyle in Wisconsin. Good source of info on canoeing, archery, weather, park info, etc. in addition to hunting, fishing & camping. Easy to find your way around this site. From West Bend.



• General Page - Wild Wisconsin here's a good looking site from Dan Hansen that he calls "resources for backpackers in the badger state." Now, is Wisconsin the Badger State, or the Cheese State? Both? Have to ask Dan about that. Anyway, WildWisconsin.com has a whole bunch of good stuff; trail databases, galleries, info on the North Country Trail, Ice Age Trail, all kinds of stuff. Site offers to post your WI hiking articles if you don't feel like going through the whole rigamarole yourself. Has a nice hiking community forum starting up too.



• Horicon Marsh US Wildlife Management Area offers 1.5 mi Horicon Habitat Trail; others.



• Ice Age Park & Trail foundation Follow the Ice Age through Wisconsin. Sort of a treasure hunt for armchair scientists.



• La Crosse River State Trail This trail is a connecting link between the Great River State Trail and the Elroy-Sparta State Trail. Beyond Elroy lies the 400 Trail with 22 miles of scenic beauty connecting Elroy to Reedsburg. Recreationalists have approximately 101 miles of biking and hiking between Perrot State Park near Trempealeau and Reedsburg, Wis.



• Ledge Rocks Trails - trails winding up and down, over and through interesting outcroppings of the Limestone Ledge (Niagara Escarpment). Cave like formations are common along this trail section. Some sections of this trail contain challenging terrain.



• Madison Area "Hoofers" Club offers organized/group Outdoor Recreation for all abilities through the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Hoofer membership is open to all University of Wisconsin-Madison students, faculty and staff, and Wisconsin Union members. (Anyone can join the Union by paying a Union membership fee.) Hiking, backpacking, horseback riding, skiing, climbing...you name it. Looks like it's worth looking into if you live around Madison.



• Parfrey's Glen site by Steven Dutch, U of Wisconsin. Numerous photos, lots of neat info. Also links to other Wisconsin geologic info, which we hikers thrive on.



• Parfrey's Glen pdf topo map on the State Dept of Natural Resources site.



• Parfrey's Glen "A Walk in Parfrey's Glen" by "blulady" (go figure) pleasant hike narrative with photos.



• Parfrey's Glen November hike narrative with numerous photos. Informative webpage by Ben Brothers.



• St. Croix National Scenic Riverway General links to numerous downloadable trail maps from Trailmonkey.com. Very valuable site to know.



• Wild Goose State Trail is a 34 mile multi-use recreation trail on an abandoned Chicago & Northwestern Railroad corridor. The trail allows travel at a safe and leisurely pace while enjoying the Dodge and Fond du Lac County country sides.



• Wisconsin Geocaching Association Geocachers are hikers most likely to toss messages in bottles. When the rest of us arrive at the summit and enjoy the view, geocachers are consulting their GPS units and rummaging around under some old tree stump. A little odd, but ain't we all? If you're interested, here's the link.



• Wyalusing State Park Trail Information map, descriptions, whatnot.



• Wyalusing State Park hike narrative from a miserable July day, with photos & description by Ben Brothers. Well worth a click.

Dells and Baraboo

Wisconsinites take some good-natured ribbing for being a rather practical sort of people; it's all in fun. And it's probably somewhat true -- consider that the two hiking books (of many) that are worth buying are both imaginitively named -- are you ready for this -- Hiking Wisconsin. The latest Hiking Wisconsin, penned by Eric Hansen, is more of an "off the beaten path" type of guide that most Wisconsinites prefer, (since you already know all the popular hikes). The earlier Hiking Wisconsin, by Martin Hintz, is from the America's Best Dayhiking series, and is ideal for newbies, visitors, or the casual hiker. Both are clearly the pick of the litter, and are the only ones I'll recommend until the next Hiking Wisconsin is authored. These links are to amazon, where you'll save about $4 off the book store price.

-- Rick Bolger

Please click here for the Slackpacker web site

Want to add YOUR Wisconsin hiking page? It's free, it's easy, and there are no strings attached. Please click the "Submit a Site" button, above left, for instructions and complete information.

Got kids? Recently caught this guy, Brady Rymer, at a show in the northeast. Infectious to say the least, a fun, energetic sing-along type thing had the audience singing and grinning from ear to ear. Now don't ask why, but I bought the CD (my own kids are teenagers) and now I can't get these tunes out of my head. If you've got kids between the ages of 2 and 7 or thereabouts, you'll just love this music. So much better musically and lyrically than the usual drivel recorded for kids, that mind-numbing stuff that drives you nuts. If you don't have kids, you'll have to think up some other excuse for buying it. And when you do, let me know, because my daughters think I'm crazy. Not sure where'd you find it in stores, so here's a direct link to Amazon.com for I Found It! and again, the singer's name is Brady Rymer. Just great stuff, excellent gift for pre-K kids.