Tunnel #3

Last summer my major bike ride was to go to New Glarus and ride through the Stewart Tunnel. At the time I was thinking that it was the longest tunnel of any of the "rails to trails" in the state, old railroad lines that have been converted to recreational trails.  I'm not sure where that thought came from.  I found out during this last winter that it wasn't the longest.  Maybe it was that it was the longest tunnel on the Badger State Trail.  At any rate, when I found out that Tunnel #3 on the Elroy-Sparta State Trail was the longest in the state  I had to go there.  Three quarters of a mile long, almost 4,000 feet.  So far you can't see the other end and the entrance from either direction.  Yep, I had to get there.  So Brommbeere and I talked, we picked a date, and waited for the date to arrive.

And finally it did.  I had done some reading about the tunnel.  4,000 feet is a long, long ways to go without a light so we had to get some really good strong and bright lights for our bikes to be able to make it through the tunnel. We had everything else we'd need but we were short a light.  So we got one. I also wanted to get some good pictures, including a movie.  So in the days just before the ride we needed to make sure everything was fully charged and ready to go.

And so it was lights! Camera! Action!  On the designated morning we loaded up the bikes and hit the road once again!

The Elroy-Sparta trail is over 40 miles long, which is a bit more than I have ever ridden in a single ride.  More than we wanted to do on this day as well.  But the nearest community to the tunnel is a little town called Norwalk.  Just over four miles from the tunnel.  After a bit of a drive we arrived.

First order of business was to get Brombeere a trail day pass.  I had gotten me an annual trail pass early on in the year but I hadn't gotten one for Brombeere because I wasn't sure she would be out riding very much.

So we stopped at a little shop right off the side of the trail and bought the pass and we were ready to go!.  And, yes.  As you can tell from the bike rack, this little shop caters to bike riders.

We took the trail west, out of town.  At first it was closed in with trees and bushes.  But within a real short distance it opened up and we got a good look at some real nice farming countryside.

The day had turned out to be just a little warmer than we had hoped so it was pretty warm when we were out of the trees in the sun.  We were pretty happy when the trees closed back in and the shade made it cool off a little.

So off through the trees we kept riding.  We had our apps going, clocking the ride, but there were also mile markers as we rode along.  I think they were counting down from Sparta.  The first one we saw was "eleven" and they went down from there, every mile.

After a while we came to the Tunnel Watchman's shed.  This was from when the trains were still running.

It was the tunnel watchman's job to open the tunnel doors whenever a train came.  That was as much as 50 times a day.  The tunnel watchman worked a 12 hour shift but only from November to April, when it was coldest.  The tunnel had doors to keep it warmer inside, in an effort to reduce the damage to the tunnel from water freezing.

For us, on this day, the nice thing about the tunnel watchman's shed was there was a working hand pump.

It took a bit of pumping but we finally coaxed water up out of the ground.  It was cold and tasted pretty good.  Quite refreshing on a warm day.

So we got a cool drink and looked around the area by the shed.

Across the trail from the shed and up a short walk was a flume, to drain water away from the tunnel.

There was a little bridge across the flume.  Made for some nice pictures.

The flume had been built along with the tunnel because there was a natural spring above the tunnel.  The flume was more of the effort to keep the water away from the tunnel.  Judging from the size of the flume it must been a lot of water.

We also figured that with the flume and the tunnel watchman's shed there we must be getting close to the tunnel so after spending a little while looking around we hit the trail again.

Sure enough, we had only gone a little farther when the walls began to rise on either side of the trail.

And then, around a corner, we could see the opening of the tunnel.  We were there!

This was far more recognizable than the entrance to the Stewart Tunnel.  I was practically at that entrance before I recognized it as the entrance.  This one had stone work all around it and, of course, the doors.

Of course, I had to do a picture.  I wanted both of us in it, and I had brought my tripod so I could set up my camera.

Standing there at the entrance to the tunnel, feeling the cool air flowing out, it felt good after the heat of the day as we rode the trail to the tunnel.

And then, we put the camera away, turned on our lights, and headed into the dark.  And it definitely was dark.  We were certainly glad we'd brought good lights.  It was dark.  As we went into the tunnel we could not see the other end, not at all.  So on we went.  It was cool.  Water was dripping all the way through the tunnel.  The center of the tunnel was raised up, a stream of water was running on both sides of the trail.  All the way through the tunnel water was dripping like rain from all over the ceiling but in some places it was running in streams down the walls.  It was like being out in the rain.

Then, suddenly, we were at the other end.  We hadn't realized we were close because it had gotten foggy.  The warm air coming in from the outside meeting with the cool, moist air inside had made it foggy.

The beam from my light, shinning through the mist.

I didn't realize it right away, when we came out, but the lenses on our cameras had condensation on them.  I had been struggling with my glasses fogging over the last little way through the tunnel.

A lot of our photos had a misty haze over them.

The cargo rack on my bike looked like it had been rained on.

Standing there, in the west entrance of the tunnel, we were still feeling the cool air coming out of the tunnel.

There was a "selfie station" there at the west entrance of the tunnel so we took another one.  Good times.

Then it was back through the tunnel and on our way home.  As we came out the east end of the tunnel I occurred to me that I had brought my movie camera and not yet made a movie.  I had fully intended to make a movie as we returned back through the tunnel but here I was back outside and no movie.  So I stopped and turned it on and made a movie of the ride to catch up with Brombeere, who hadn't realized I had stopped and had ridden on ahead.

And so we have a catch up movie.  And, no, we did not collide.  It just looks like we were about to because of the wide angle lens on the camera.

The really nice thing about the ride back was that it was pretty much all down hill.

The Elroy-Sparta trail has three tunnels along it and each one is at the crest of a rise that goes up for miles to each tunnel and then falls back down over the miles from each tunnel. A gentle rise but one that goes on for miles.

So while the ride to the tunnel had been a bit of hot, sweaty work, getting back was a breeze.

And, of course, we had to go back to the same little shop for some lunch.  The perfect way to end a very nice visit to a really cool place (quite literally) and very fun ride!