Trans-Wisconsin Adventure Trail

Hello everyone,

This is an invitation to join me on a run of the Trans Wisconsin Adventure Trail early in the riding season. May 23 - May 26. That would be 3 days on the trail and taking advantage of Memorial Day for the ride home.

I started to plan this as a Driftless Dual Sport Riders club ride, but I don’t want to bother with AMA sanctioning or any of that insurance nonsense. This is not an organized event; I’m doing a thing, come along if you would like to.

My plan would be to camp in Galena at the Palace campground on Thursday, May 22, have everyone meet either there that evening or at the start of the trail south of Hazel Green at the state line the morning of May 23.

I'll be on my CRF300, and if others are also on little bikes or on a big bike and want things a little spicy, I can look into modifying the route a little to pick up more of the ATV trails on the way.

I plan to camp. If the overnight temps are below 40, I may want to modify it to hotel stays. I'll make that decision a minimum of one week before departure. I plan to go even if the forecast is for rain.

This is not a guided tour; I expect everyone to have the track on GPS or phone and be able to navigate. I will have tools with me, but if your bike needs something out of the ordinary for tire changes, you should have it with you. Bring spare tubes and a patch kit.

If it's dusty, we'll break up into groups of 4 or less to minimize how much anyone will be sucking dust, and it'll be easier to keep an eye on each other.

I won't be cooking at camp; expect a stop for dinner, a stop for a few snacks before heading to camp, and then a stop for breakfast in the morning.

If this is the first time moto camping for anyone, I plan to have a meeting beforehand where we can talk over what to pack and any other concerns.

I will have an emergency beacon and I do have some experience with accident scenes but there is always risk and it is yours to bear. This is a group of friends traveling, not a tour, you are expected to carry your own insurance. In case of a breakdown that can't be resolved trailside, I will help get you to a Uhaul so you can get yourself and your bike back home.

I plan to put this out as a pretty open invitation and we may get a very wide range of abilities and paces. I plan to be pretty chill for pace but we may self-select and break up into separate groups if someone is feeling overwhelmed or utterly bored by the pace. If the pace is too much, speak up, never be shy about it. I never want someone to get hurt because they tried to keep up. I would rather wait for you on the trail than to wait for emergency services. Trust me, it sucks for everyone if someone gets hurt.

Enough rambling, let me know who is interested and a little about your experience level and start dreaming about riding thru the woods and fields of Wisconsin.

I’ll put together an email list of everyone who’s going. I plan on a few zoom calls to discuss maybe an in person get together.

Cheers,

Tim Clarke

Update from 3/17

I have had enough people give me firm commitments that I can confidently say we will have at least a group of five or six of us riding. There are, of course, more than 20 who have given me a tentative or interested, so if the weather is good, we might have quite a crowd rolling down the road.

I am tinkering with some GPS tracks, but starting with the core of what Chad had mapped out so many years ago. I have three alternates mapped out if we want to skip Iowa and stay entirely in Wisconsin. Depending on the route chosen, it will cut about an hour or more of travel time to Soldiers Grove. These alternates will mean less gravel, but may make the first day of riding a little shorter so everyone is fresher for the harder days to come. It also gets us a little further north for the first night on the trail where there are more options for camping.

I have picked out a couple of spots where I could add some more ATV routes, but it has been quite a long time since I’ve ridden in some of those areas and I don’t know how difficult they will be. Some of them I know are very deep sand or always muddy with deep water holes. Rather than running the core route through those sections, I will have them as alternates for people who want to have things a little more spicy. I’m going to put in some rally points so that we can quickly identify locations for us to regroup after a bypass.

Since it is the holiday weekend, I am tracking down multiple campsite locations and may even book a few sites. It’s still too early in the season for many places to take reservations for a single night. Pacing is always a variable so it’s hard to commit to a campground. It’s better for me to research and find places that are less likely to fill and figure it out over dinner.

I plan to leave Madison around 5:30 p.m. on 5/22 and arrive in Galena by 8 or so. If you don’t want to join me at the Palace Campground that night, the plan is to meet at the start point south of Hazel Green at 8 a.m.

Here’s a rough idea of how I plan a travel day to go:

Awake at 5:30, kickstands up by 6:15

Breakfast no later than 7

Lunch at noon

Dinner by 17:30

Start looking for camp @ 18:30

Camp site by 19:30

Sunset @ 20:30-20:45

Wind down @ 21:30

Breakfast within 1/2 hour of camp

Dinner within 1.5 hours of camp

Fuel / camp snack, beer/ morning coffee stop between 17:30 - 19:30

Of course, pace, weather, and availability may shift these times. It’s always good to have a few snacks on hand and a hydration pack.

I’ll host a Zoom call Tuesday 3/25 7-9 p.m. where we can all chat about it. Link sent out once I figure out how to set it up.

Remember to pick up trail passes for the areas we will be passing thru. If I’ve missed one, please let me know.

WI State trail pass

https://gowild.wi.gov

Jackson County

https://www.jacksoncountyparks.us/parks/permits_and_products/

Clark County

Knobby Ridge - no fee, covered by WIDNR grant

Cheers,

Tim Clarke

TWT Update 4/1

I spent my weekend with my nose buried in mapping programs and some of you have seen my initial test files.

I ran into some glitches on output that lead me to dig a little deeper into how I was creating each track. Which, being an over-thinker led me to changing my whole approach to route creation and I'm in the middle of another redraw of the track.

My new approach is to draw the big bike / hard stuff bypass as the core backbone of the route and have the more difficult sections as extra tracks. The main driver of this decision is the idea that the people who most need the bypasses may also be those less familiar with multi-track navigation. This gives them one track to follow north that with the new Garmin devices can be converted to a route with turn guidance.

One of the other reasons I did this is that many GPS apps will randomly reassign colors when importing the files. This would make communication between riders more difficult. With the new approach, any side trip will be either a more difficult route or a spur to services like fuel or food.

I've added 20 rally points along the route, each of them should be at locations where a dozen or so bikes can be safely parked while waiting for everyone to catch up. They should also make it easier for riders to join up mid-journey.

The new files will not accommodate older devices with a 500 point limit on tracks. However, my track does not deviate from the original by much so you should be fine if that's what you have, just import the rally points and we should be on the same page.

The benefit is that everyone should see a more detailed track that more closely conforms to the roads and should reduce confusion at turns.

I hope everyone will indulge me and my obsessing over these details. I should have something worth sharing in the next week or so.

I will share the files both on a google drive and, if I can get it to work, on my side-project website timccmoto.com/twat

Cheers,

Tim Clarke