The Sugar River Trail is a 25-mile long rail-trail in Green County in south-central Wisconsin, following the Sugar River and Little Sugar River (which it crosses, we are told, fourteen times, mostly on nice wooden bridges) along the route of the former Milwaukee Road, AKA the Limburger Special Line. After freight service was abandoned in 1972, the decision was made to convert it into a rail-trail, and by 1974 it was in operation- making it "one of the first 500 rail-trails in America," as a plaque on the route proclaims. It's part of the Ice Age Trail and of the Wisconsin East-West Bikeway (of which I had never heard).
The surface is the usual for Wisconsin rail-trails: crushed limestone in decent condition. Some of the wooden bridges are starting to show their age- the planks have cupped, leading to a washboard effect when you ride across them. And, of course, it's dead flat- nowhere greater than a 1% grade. Perhaps recognizing that this might drive some roadies nuts, the DNR has designed a set of six short "alpine" tours starting from various points along the trail. Ask for a map at the trail headquarters in New Glarus if you want to try those.
Like the other state-owned trails, riders aged sixteen or older must have a state trail pass to ride the trail legally-- either a $5 daily pass or an $18 annual pass. You can buy those at certain local businesses, and you can-- at least in theory-- self-register at trailheads. Two of our party planned to do the self-registration thing, but never found a blank registration form at any of the stations. In theory, you can get a ticket for riding without a trail pass, but in practice it seems as if the real threat is that of being offered the opportunity to purchase one on the spot should you get stopped. That's Wisconsin for you.
Here is an online copy of a brochure on the Sugar River Trail published by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, complete with a map from the Green County tourism web site.
Want to do some road-riding in the area? This Bicycling Community Page has cue sheets for the two Wednesday Night Rides that start in the area: the 22-mile New Glarus tour, and the 26-mile Belleville to Monticello tour. Either would satisfy your hunger for hills.
The Independent-Register is a newspaper based in Brodhead, the "official newspaper of Brodhead and Green County" with a web site here.
The New Glarus Chamber of Commerce has a web site here; that resource has a calendar of events, a list of attractions, and a list of restaurants.
APU Web Design hosts a web site for New Glarus here. Here is the section on the Sugar River Trail.
The Wisconsin Bed and Breakfast Association lists its member inns here.
On Sunday, July 26, 1998, a bunch of us decided to try out the Sugar River Trail, starting from Brodhead at the south end. We did it this way because New Glarus is well-known to have decent restaurants, whereas Brodhead was, and remains, a culinary unknown to us. Readers?
Adults Bart and Karen Miller, Scott Rose, and Anne Condon, eight-year Jacob Miller, and five year old Sara Miller rode their own bikes, seven-year-old Fiona Condon rode her trail-a-bike, and three-year-old Emil Rose rode in his Burley trailer.
We decided to start from the trailhead in downtown Broadhead (which with a population of 3310 makes it the big town on this route). We just followed the signs from the main road and found it without any trouble. The parking lot was entirely empty when we arrived at about 9:30AM. Conveniently, there were (somewhat primitive) restrooms and water right there. Somewhat less conveniently, it turned out that the actual path started more than a mile away, where there was plenty of roadside parking. Next time, I'd use the facilities at the trailhead but drive the mile to the start of the trail. The road between them wasn't bad, but it was a road.
Like other rail-trails, the entire length of the trail was quite flat. Unlike the others I've ridden, though, it wasn't particularly straight, particularly at this southern end. That was most welcome. This was the only rail-trail I've ever ridden that had warning signs about the curviness of the trail.
We didn't get too far along before Karen and Sara disappeared from sight. I'd like to say that we stopped and waited for them repeatedly, but that would be a filthy lie.
Not too far outside of Brodhead-- less than half way to Albany-- one encounters a covered bridge. It turns out to be a slighly smaller replica of a covered bridge that served the area for almost 70 years until, in 1931, a mishap with a truck ended it's life of service. The new bridge was built with old barn wood in 1984, and it's quite convincing. We almost wish that they had lied to us about the authenticity.
The trail skirts Albany (pop. 1140), and the only way you know that you've passed it is from the fact that you have to cross state highway 59 just afterwards. I'm told that there is a pop machine at the gas station that you can see from the intersection of the trail with 59. We didn't check out the town or the pop machine.
I'd like to be able to say that the second wife-and-small-child continued past this point with us, but that would be another dirty lie. Instead, I traded the Burley and the three-year-old for the trail-a-bike and the seven-year-old and started burning up some miles.
Brodhead to Albany is about seven miles.
Just after Albany, one passes through the Albany Wildlife Area. The handiest feature thereof was the nice green canopy that kept us in the shade about half the time. By now, we were starting to encounter some other riders, who presumably got a real early start in New Glarus or Monticello.
The trailhead in Monticello (pop. 1000) is the former rail depot, outfitted with water, toilets, and some picnic tables. The depot itself was locked up. Signs directed us to town "six blocks" away, which seemed like a reasonable investment to us, so we took the plunge.
It was a short, flat, relatively traffic-free trip (of, yes, about six blocks) into town. It's a pretty nice old downtown, full of turn of the century buildings and, thankfully, a big, well-stocked grocery store that was serving quite effectively as the social center of the town.
This isn't the sort of town where you walk past people with your eyes averted- nearly everybody greeted us, despite our bicyclist geekiness.
As for the cuisine, let me highly recommend the bag-of-a-dozen chocolate chip cookies. Food always tastes better on a ride, but grocery store cookies often fail to rise above the threshold of acceptability- they often seem to be made in large part out of some gummy substance. These were better than what come out of my oven, and were dirt cheap.
From Albany to Monticello was about ten miles.
By now, the trail was starting to fill up with riders, filtering down from New Glarus. That meant moderating the pace a bit, because you never know when a four-year-old rider is going to swoop out from behind the rest of her party into your path.
This section of the trail is a bit wider, a bit straighter, and perhaps a little bit better-maintained than the more southerly portions. The canopy is less continuous, too, all of which adds up, in my book, to a preference for the other end. But the riding was still good, and this was the only section of the trail where we found ripening blackberries to wolf down. It was still early in the season, though.
We arrived in New Glarus at 1:00, shortly after one wife-and-child pair, and just before the other. It turns out that my Lovely Wife and son had spent some time standing by the trail in Monticello with rations for us for a little while before southbound tourists pointed out to her that they'd seen us on the trail quite some time before. She took this pretty well.
On the one hand, New Glarus seems a bit... precious. On the other hand, it's rather authentic. It was settled in 1845 by a party of about 100 Swiss residents of the canton of Glarus, who had been displaced from their occupations as weavers by the advent of new technologies. Roads in the region are named after the original immigrants. Residents in the region are also named after the original immigrants, because they tend to be their descendents.
The trail headquarters in New Glarus is the former depot. There are toilets and water. Inside, there is a vast array of literature for the taking and a few printed items for sale-- such as, for $1, the DNR's A Guide to the Sugar River State Trail, which I am drawing heavily upon for this document. This document was written in 1986 by Bonnie Gruber, which makes it a bit elderly, but this isn't exactly the sort of material that changes every day, so I think it's aged well. Besides history, it's got quite a bit of information on plant life encountered along the trail. It would have been more fun to have had it at the start of the trip instead of at the end, though...
From Monticello to New Glarus was about six miles.
Also inside are bicycles for rent. The bicycle rentals are quite popular. They have some tandems for rent, which is a nice way to try out a $1000 bicycle of a type that most of us will never buy. Reportedly, there is also a concession stand, but I somehow managed to miss it- I was being hounded by my party to move expeditiously towards luncheon.
We had lunch upstairs at the downtown New Glarus Bakery and Tea Room (608-527-2916) after facing a choice of dining with our kids in the smoking section at the New Glarus Hotel or waiting for twenty minutes. I've eaten at the Hotel before, and was looking forward to doing so again, but fate intervened. Auspiciously, as it turned out.
The first sign that the (fully non-smoking) bakery restaurant was going to be okay was the full-sized espresso machine behind the counter. When it turned out that they use Ancora coffee ("fair exchange" coffee roasted in Madison), it became possible to experience optimism. When the bread basket arrived bearing, among other choices, authentic German style rye fully the equal of that from Clasen's in Middleton, we knew that we were in a happy place. My garden lasagna, built from pasta made downstairs and augmented with an excellent carrot salad, didn't disappoint.
This place turns out to be one of the oldest continuously operating bakeries in Wisconsin. The bread that they served upstairs turned out to be for sale downstairs, so we sprang for a loaf- at $3.80 for a two-pound loaf, we wish we'd eaten more of it upstairs. Besides a variety of other mostly German-style breads, there are also lots of very rich desserts for sale both upstairs and down. We were unable to partake.
After lunch, we decided to play tourist a bit, and visited the Swiss Village Museum just a few blocks away on Seventh Street. This is a pretty comprehensive enterprise, with about a dozen separate structures each covering some aspect of the life of the original Swiss immigrants, with a bit of Native American stuff thrown in for completeness. There is a round-robin guided tour, which means that you can just jump in whenever you arrive and jump back out again when you've done the circuit or had your fill. One of our tour guides, clearly a high school student, was descended from the original set of immigrants. My kids are suckers for this sort of historical tourism, so we had a pretty good time with this visit. I am only thankful that none of the tour buses that we saw careening through the steep streets of New Glarus happened to overlap with our visit.
About a block away from the depot is a public swimming pool. That would have been a good choice for a way to end a hot day, but we ran out of time.
Created July 30, 1998. Last updated July 30, 1998. Written by Scott Rose, who welcomes your comments, corrections, and flames. Copy this document at will.
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