I Found My Thrill on Blueberry Hill

Julie and I hit the road early this morning -- earlier than we do most work days. We had 150 miles to drive to make it to Cain's Orchard, near Eau Claire, before all of the blueberries were picked. Cain's is apparently one of the few places in the state where one can go to pick your own blueberries, and our mission today was to experience blueberry picking first-hand.

We arrived at Cain's by about 9:45 am, and we were absolutely shocked to see the countless hoards of people there. Most of the people we saw were weighed down with buckets and boxes full of blueberries, and they were already waiting in line to pay for their booty. It was a rather depressing sight after a long drive, and we feared that the human locusts may have picked the berry bushes clean. Fortunately, there were still plenty of berries waiting for us, although we probably had to reach a little further for our berries than all of the early arrivals.




Here's Julie hard at work picking blueberries. We'd never seen them in the wild before. As you can see, they grow on a bush. We picked for about 90 minutes and ended up with a couple of gallons of berries. It was a fun time, although I'm not so sure I want to drive up there again next year!








After picking blueberries, we drove down to the Elroy-Sparta bike trail. We went about 18 miles and traveled through the two biggest tunnels. One of the tunnels was about 1/4 of a mile long and the other was about 3/4 of a mile. Very cool -- literally and figuratively!








Here's Julie checking out the water dripping from the ceiling in the longer tunnel (formerly train tunnels -- you can even see the old soot on the ceiling in places). We're near one end here, and you can see the other end a ways in the background. It was a great time biking the trail and walking the tunnels, and I'm already looking forward to our next ride there.