Other stories in "Bicycling"

• Bikes, birds and bogs
  Wisconsin's Great River Trail is a happy mix of wildlife and civilization.
• Wisconsin's bike trails: a guide
  The state that pioneered rail trails isn't resting on its laurels.
• Spokes, sneakers and shops
  She likes to shop and he likes to sweat? No problem.
• Bicycling Minnesota
  Across the map, new trails are connecting the dots.
• Languid in Lanesboro
  In summer, head for lovely Lanesboro and go with the flow.
• Bicycling the Bunyan
  A long trail cuts through the heart of Minnesota lakes country.
• Bicycling in bluff country
  In southeast Minnesota, the Root River Trail brought swarms of tourists.
• A trail for Old Abe
  On Wisconsin's Chippewa River, a bald eagle paves way for bicyclists.
• Mankato meander
  To see the best of this low-key river town, hop on a bike.
• Rolling through the Iron Range
  The long Mesabi Trail reveals many surprises.
• Spin City
  On a bicycle, visitors can explore every inch of Chicago's lakefront.
• Red Cedar ride 'n' glide
  Along a popular Wisconsin trail, a hardy tourist can take in the sights by water and by land.
• Sightseeing on $20 a day
  See the best of the Midwest from seat of a bicycle.
• Walk 'n' roll
  Thanks to a bike trail, backtracking on the Superior Hiking Trail is a thing of the past.
• A slice of cheese country
  On Wisconsin's Badger Trail, bicyclists bite off as much as they can chew.
• Grand Rounds
  In Minneapolis, bicyclists soak up the scenery along a breathtaking national byway.
• Hitting the trails in Trempealeau
  There's lots to do in this Mississippi River hamlet.
• Bicycling to Lake Wobegon
  In central Minnesota, cyclists enter a storied land.
• Bicycling the Central Lakes
  In western Minnesota, a 55-mile trail is a window onto the natural world.

Bicycling eastern Wisconsin

On a burgeoning network of trails, a bicyclist can cover a lot of ground.

In eastern Wisconsin, the map of bicycle trails is starting to look like the spokes of a wheel.

From Green Bay, trails radiate west to Wausau, east to Door County and south toward the Fox Cities. From Milwaukee, trails go north toward Sheboygan and west to Madison. From Madison, trails head west for Dodgeville. And it won't be long before all of these trails connect in a vast spider web of asphalt and crushed limestone. See Wisconsin's bike trails: a guide.

"Sometimes, your head is just spinning," says Mike Kading, director of parks and recreation in the Fox Cities town of Menasha, which now is connected to Oshkosh and the Wiouwash State Trail by the Friendship State Trail.

For that trail, the crucial link was the ¾-mile Trestle Trail over Little Lake Butte des Morts, which includes a lift bridge over a working lock. Between Sept. 12, 2005, and June 5, 2006, Kading said, counters recorded 105,000 visits to the new trail, which is lighted at night, includes lovely views of wetlands and has become known as a great place for a cheap date.

"We set out to connect land, and in the end, it connected people," he said.

Since 1967, when its famous Elroy-Sparta State Trail debuted as the first rail trail in the nation, Wisconsin has been building bicycle trails with breathless speed. Now, counties and cities are building trails, too, putting them not only on abandoned rail beds but also on utility rights-of-way and parkland.

The Elroy-Sparta is still a fun trail, and its three damp, spooky tunnels are irresistible to tourists. Yet, it's so 20th century. There are lots of new trails to try now.

Interurban Trail

One June, I rode the Interurban Trail in Ozaukee County, where electric trolleys ran between Milwaukee and Sheboygan until 1948.

Today, the old railway is a 30-mile paved trail that links bicyclists and skaters from the Milwaukee suburbs to old German mill towns, a port town full of yachts and a village settled by Luxembourgers.

I started in the town park of Mequon, one of the state's earliest German settlements, and within a block was in Thiensville, where a German immigrant built a mill along a bend in the Milwaukee River.

The bike trail parallels Main Street, but I found the interesting part of town — the stone mill, a cheerful coffee shop in a Victorian house, an old-fashioned village park — off Green Bay Road, just to the east.

From Thiensville, the trail had barely left the houses behind before it entered Cedarburg, a popular getaway destination for people from Milwaukee and Chicago. Shops and a winery fill its 1864 woolen mill and the handsome stone buildings along Washington Avenue, where crowds were shopping and stuffing themselves with brats and strawberry shortcake last weekend during Strawberry Festival, which draws 50,000 to the little burg.

A little trestle bridge crosses Cedar Creek in the middle of town and leads through quiet neighborhoods to Grafton, a Milwaukee River mill town that is not as carefully preserved as Cedarburg but still has many old stone buildings. One of the prettiest spots on the trail is just north of town, where a new iron bridge crosses the river.

From there, the trail crosses over Interstate 43 and descends into Port Washington, a picturesque village with a marina full of charter fishing boats, a 1935 art deco light station and a historic downtown where Leland Stanford practiced law before he left to join the Gold Rush and become governor of California.

At the quirky Pebble House, built in 1848 of mortar and round stones collected from the Lake Michigan beach, I ran into tourism director Kathleen Tank, who said bicyclists like the short distances between towns on the Interurban Trail.

"People like it because they don't have to make a big deal about it," she said. "My daughter is 18, and sometimes she and her friends ride from Cedarburg to Port Washington for lunch and back again."

In the marina, I watched a covey of ducklings and men being photographed with large catches of salmon. Back on the trail, I passed steep wooden steps that led to the blufftop 1860 light tower and museum and the imposing St. Mary's, an 1884 Gothic Revival church.

From Port Washington, the trail to Belgium is straight and flat, perfect for in-line skating. From there, it continues across the county border to Cedar Grove, but bicyclists also can take a county road three miles east to Harrington State Park and its Lake Michigan beach.

Oak Leaf Trail

The Interurban was a great trail, but I found an even better one the next day, almost by accident. Riding past the Milwaukee Art Museum, I decided to take a spin on the Oak Leaf Trail, which I'd thought simply followed parkland along Lake Michigan.

Instead, I found myself riding along a hillside and into a cocoon of greenery that follows the Milwaukee River under street level, much like the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis. Yet, I couldn't see the river until I found my way to its banks along overgrown paths in Riverside Park, across from the new Urban Ecology Center; its shores are so wooded I could spot only one building.

Pedaling north, at street level but surrounded by trees, I had no idea where I was until the trail dumped me out onto a street, where another cyclist said I was in the suburb of Whitefish Bay.

Following his advice, I rode Hampton Avenue east to Lake Michigan, where Lake Drive took me past a string of baronial manors that made those on Summit Avenue look like starter houses. Trying to catch a view of the lake, I got my wish in Atwater Park, a blufftop garden with a sweeping panorama and paved trails that wind down to a wide, sandy beach.

Just over the city's border with Shorewood, I rejoined the Oak Leaf Trail in Lake Park and swooped down to the lakefront, watching a freighter on the lake as I rode back to the art museum and downtown.

The next day, I went to the visitors center to beg for a bike map and found out the Oak Leaf Trail actually has 48 miles of paved off-road paths, 31 miles of parkway drives and 27 miles of connecting streets that eventually will be converted to off-road paths.

Like Minneapolis' Grand Rounds, the trail circles the city on parkways, following Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Root rivers; on its north edge, only two miles of city streets separate it from the Interurban Trail.

That's typical Milwaukee, which always has seemed loath to toot its own horn. It's actually a fantastic town, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation just named it one of this year's "Dozen Distinctive Destinations." No doubt, the Oak Leaf Trail is one of the better ways to explore it.

In Wisconsin, bike trails are popping up so fast mapmakers can't keep up with them. So, if you're in the mood for adventure, start pedaling.

Last updated on July 31, 2008