Walkin’ in Wausau – Cedar Creek Trail

I “discovered” this trail (and next week’s post) through a friend’s invite to participate in an MS walk. This is such a beautiful area, it feels like you are walking through a forest … on a paved path. 

Just a warning, there are no bathrooms or playgrounds in the immediate area. After the MS walk, I brought my kids here and we learned the hard way to always, always bring the stroller, snacks, and drinks. And as soon as the bathrooms are out of sight, someone will need a bathroom, NOW!

There are a few points of access to the Cedar Creek Trail. For this post’s tour, we parked behind the Stoney Creek hotel — you do not have to cross the street when you park here. Or you can access the trail via River Street Park — to get to the section of trail we were on, you will be walking along Birch Street. 

This is the first thing you will see as you start on your way. So cool! 

A few bends of the trail will take you under an overpass and through another covered bridge and to a second wooden bridge. 

Uh – Um, Hmm. That wasn’t like that before …  We had a bit of rain between the MS walk and this visit which lead to flooding of the area. We were able to cut through the woods fairly easily to pick up the trail again and the bridge was fixed by our next visit. 

We decided to do a bit of exploring and check out the view. Don’t worry, we still have four children and this was not an attempt to get rid of a younger brother, but to use her younger brother to steady herself. 

We were still going strong at this point and excited about Mom’s idea to come here and see what was waiting for us at the end of the trail. 

The trail merges with Birch Road and continues to River Street Park. We pushed on to River Street Park, played briefly and left when the “I’m hungry” and “I’m tired” started. I soon discovered we left too late …

Hey, look! A rare photo of the blogger. Hiii! 

This is not a we are so enjoying this trip photo. This is a reuniting of mother and son photo.

A certain someone decided to sit down and refuse to walk. An attempt to motivate that certain someone to stand up was made by increasing the distance between them while the other members of the family kept pushing forward, in order to get back to the vehicle as fast as possible because they were ‘dying’ of thirst, hunger, and their legs were about to fall off. 

That attempt backfired, sitting continued followed by screaming and crying. &@$%! Distance between the two people decreased and they were reunited and hurried to catch up with the rest of the group.

Yep, that is a victory smile on his face. He won. Mom is mentally preparing herself to carry that little boulder the rest. of. the. way. Yes, I meant to say boulder, he is so hard to hold — heavy, wiggling, twisting, the incoherant whines that signaled I wasn’t holding him ‘correctly’. Argh. One day we’ll laugh at this. Or one day, the kids will rehash this event as an adult with their therapist about that time their Mom almost left one of their siblings to fend for himself in the wilderness.

Always, always, always bring the stroller, snacks, and drinks. 

We all recovered, but have yet to laugh about the traumatic first trip, and when I convinced them to try again, we came back, prepared — bikes, stoller, snacks, & drinks. 

Do you have any somewhat traumatic outing stories to share? Do you laugh about it now? 

Next week, I’ll give you the low-down on River Street Park/River Park.