Seg#28 Looking at the Next Decade On the Old Abe Trail

Segment #28: Old Abe Trail Chippewa Falls to N of Cornell, WI   8/21/13

Start	Chippewa Falls, WI	44.91902,-91.38194	NS miles 18.3
End	N of Cornell WI	45.18141,-91.16169	Trllgth 26.1 Ride 28.5

Ride Hrs2.6

AVS 10.5

MXS 17.2 mph

DST 28.5

Temp 86

Kcal 2259

Don ready to ride the smoothest trail ever

As stated in the previous post, on the 20th of August, I celebrated my last year for me to say "I am in my sixties and going strong." Hopefully that will be the case as a septuagenarian :-)

After an eight hour power slumber at America’s Best Value Inn, we loaded up and drove to Chippewa Falls in search of the Old Abe Trail.  Somehow the coordinates I plugged into the GPS didn’t fit what I reviewed on the computer the night before. Luckily a fellow that knew the area peddled up and directed Don and me to a route that got us to the trail head. It helped tremendously to find the Chippewa Falls Visitors Center on our way to the trail. The center was full of information, including detailed city and county maps. The minute we started on the Old Abe trail, I knew this was going to be one the best surfaces I had ever ridden. Old Abe was as smooth as a  five blade razor shave. Many of the small towns on the trail were formed when logging and the railroads were going strong. By the mid-1900’s many of these small lumber towns were drying up. We stopped at a site where a lumber mill and town once stood with a population of three thousand. Nothing remains of this town today. We made it to Cornell, Wisconsin after lunch time  so as soon we got our bikes loaded, we headed to Dylan’s Dairy store. The store was a cheese and sandwich shop that

Connie buys out Dylan's after a super lunch

was established three years ago after the passing of Dylan Crabb, a local young man that fought leukemia until therapy, including bone marrow transplants, could not stop the disease. Dylan’s “Make a Wish” was to manage a herd of 33 dairy cows. He was able to do that before he left this planet. Today his mother and aunts are managing the herd and operate the diary store. I give the shop a ten for quaintness and good food. I would love to get back there someday. While we were eating, the friendly staff told of us about  the uniqueness of the Stacker. This 175 foot piece of equipment is the only such machine standing in the world. The design of the contraption was for stacking log sections into a huge pile of wood to use in the pulp mill that operated in Cornell from 1913 to 1972. The Stacker reminds 

The only standing Stacker in the world 

me of a metal version of the leaning tower of Pisa. Connie and I never got to Pisa or Mount Vesuvius but did spend time in Florence and Rome. Now we don’t need to go to Italy. We can say we saw the American version of Pisa while traveling Wisconsin on a bicycle-- no need to fly across the pond to Italy.

Back in the day, the Stacker could create 100
foot piles of log sections to then be processed
into pulp for producing paper.  

The population has grown 53 folks since publication

of 485. A smaller sign (upper left)identifies writer

Michael Perry as a citizen of New Auburn.

Another nice feature of riding to Cornell was that we were only thirty miles from New Auburn, Wisconsin. And what is the big deal about New Auburn you say? Why that is where one of my favorite authors is from. Michael Perry is a New Auburnite that can write about his living in northern Wisconsin in a most humorous way that I identify with well---Qwerty I guess. The Lincoln Journal Star described Michael’s style as “Part Bill Bryson, part Anne Lamott, with a skim of Larry the Cable Guy and Walt Whitman creeping around the edges” I have read three of his four books. Right now I am half way through Truck. His first book entitled Population 485-Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time got him on the map. It also messed-up the road signs that now state the population as 548. As you can see in the picture I took, the community pride has exploded now that Michael is famous. The fact that he continues to live nearby made it interesting to cruise around and relive his stories. I wonder if too many visitors will sour the town folks attitude about bringing notoriety to the community. We tried not to be too paparazzi-like, shooting but a few pictures of Main Street and the water tower. We decided not to try to find Michael’s farm home-creativity site, avoiding a disruption of genesis.