Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Thursday December 12th, 2024.
Have your host James J. Mailov here.
Today we are speaking with our good friends from the Wood County Parks and Forestry Department.
We have Chad Schooly with us, Chad, good to see you as always.
Yeah, thanks.
And we have a Ryan, I'm sorry, Dan Volt with a, Volt with us, a snowmobile and ATV trail
squad, and they're Dan, good to have you with us.
Thanks for having me.
Dan got to be here with us more so I can get that name right, all right?
The more you're here, the more you get a right, appreciate the time you guys and thanks
for being here.
I certainly want to start out by thanking you guys and everybody working in your team at
the Parks and Forestry Department, or certainly with our trail coordinators out there working
so hard, especially this time of year, where it's go time for you guys.
This is a, this is a, this is a Super Bowl.
This is the time of year for you all.
And that's kind of where we're going to put a lot of our focus today is, is the trails,
is the snowmobile, ATV trail coordinating and some of that.
And it comes to this topic when it comes to this time of year.
How is it at the office, Chad?
How is it for you guys, the work that the, the days, what is a day in the life like over
there at the Parks and Forestry Department?
Well, it's, it's usually just kind of that transition time, right, between camping and
summer, warm weather, recreation and looking forward to the cold weather, recreation.
So, but we have, we have a lot of projects going on, so in the past, you know, this may
have been kind of a slower portion of the year for our office staff, specifically, but we've
been, I've given, I've been giving them a lot of work because we have a lot of projects
going on.
Yeah.
We're all, we're all involved with that, so yeah.
Before we get to, too deep into this season, just to rewind for a second to last year,
where there was no snow.
I mean, we got some, but it really, we were really hit really hard without not getting
hit hard by, by snow and everything.
How much did that affect, last year affect this year and preparing the trails or doing
any of the work, the kind of prep that you guys have to do for this season?
Well, every year is a little different, you know, because through the warm season, you
know, we have trees that fall, we have different things, but that was one good thing.
Last year with the winter season, having very little snow, we were able to get a lot of,
a lot of projects done that we typically wouldn't because we'd be spending more time at
Powers Bluff and on our trail, winter trails, things like that.
So that was a blessing in disguise, but we were only open for two days last year at Powers
Bluff for tubing and skiing.
Some of the snowmobile trails, I don't believe even open last year, some of them did.
So, obviously, there's pros and cons of not having a real snowy winter, but I think
people in Central Wisconsin us included, we'd like some snow this year.
Yeah, I have put the order into Mother Nature and then from what our weather team is telling
us, she has heard us.
And just as important for us as it is here, certainly up north and hoping for them to
get some snow and everything for so much of the retail and the workers up that way.
Chad, I'm sorry, Dan, I want to jump into a snowmobile and ATV trail program update as
well with you and get kind of an update on the trails and the systems, how that's going
in these early days.
I've kind of getting ready for all this, so for Mother Nature to drop some snow on us.
Yeah, we're in a process, we have seven clubs, volunteer clubs in the Central Wisconsin
area.
They basically, they get together, they go out, they sign trails, clean trails, brush.
A lot of their efforts are reimbursed through the state to a program that we run through
the county park's office.
They get reimbursed $300 a mile for their efforts.
Obviously, that isn't always enough to cover all this, so they do different fundraisers.
You got radar runs with the calendar nights, Rudolph River, Rovers are always got gun
raffles, Bakerville's got money raffles, Vesper and that area, they do snow, snowcross
with vintage snowmobile sled races and Arpen, they're always doing stuff to kind of help
fund their trail system and then they're always making it available for all their land
owners because without the land owners, this wouldn't happen.
I mean, they're always appreciative to them guys, they throw some gatherings, they get
people involved, shuttles to their land owners, just as a thank you because it's a right
in a privilege to be able to go on other people's land and enjoy the scenery and beauty of
the county.
I mean, without the land owners, this wouldn't, it wouldn't work, you know.
To that point, we're happy to, every month Sheriff Sean Becker joins us and Sean and
I have talked about this a lot over the years.
It's something he's really passionate about, like so many of our individuals, our community
members around here, love ATV, love having these trails, but respect so much of these
land owners giving up that land to be able to do this, which is always going to remind
you to treat these trails with respect, treat them like you're going to grandma's house
for dinner.
You know, you don't put your ear, your feet on the table like grandma's, you're sure
it didn't in mine, you don't do that, you treat it with respect, treat it like it's your
land, treat it with respect, and we can keep these trails going for many, many years.
And please stay on the trails, that's a problem, all the land owners appreciate that.
Are there any other things, especially before we're hitting these trails that kind of remind
people of, hey, keep, remember to do this, remember to keep up on this, everybody, along
with some of the stuff we just mentioned there, of course.
Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, there's people buy their season passes, you know, the registration,
that's all helps with the funding to keep everything going.
That's things that can be done ahead of time.
You know, just getting involved with clubs, you know, if you're interested in snowmobiling,
you're always looking for volunteers and fresh backs to help put signs and to do some
chainsaw.
I mean, you always hear that from clubs, and if you want your trails to succeed, you've
got to have people willing to go out there.
I mean, it's, if you get out there on nice days, it's beautiful.
It's a good time of year to be out in a boat, and they're always looking for help by its
soul.
As long as we're talking about it, I wanted to make sure to get this in here, but sometime
in the conversation, another thing that's come up with Sean before and some other of our
guests, that these clubs that we appreciate them and the work that they do, and the fun
that they create for our communities, they could always use more people, and we're always
looking for younger people, especially to get into this sport and have some fun with
this activity and everything.
It's something that's still doing well.
I would say that the industry, all of that is very healthy, but could always use younger
people involved in these things.
That's always encouraged.
We encourage you to do that and find out more.
Want to send a big kind of just open call to any of those clubs out there.
If they ever want to join us on the air here, I'd love to have them on, love to talk
with them, love to talk ATVs and more of this stuff with them, and maybe bring a little
more members to their clubs.
I think that'd be fun.
I did have a quick question for you, Dan.
I just was doing a little prep for the interview here and was thinking about it, and I don't
know if I've ever really talked about this with anybody, but we talk a lot about, not
a lot, but every once in a while, it comes up of a trail going away, or somebody taking
a trail off the land, or reminding people to treat these trails with respect.
What if somebody wants to start a trail?
What if somebody has some land and they'd like to, hey, I got some land here, maybe I want
to create a trail or something, is that even possible, is that something people can do?
Am I asking you a question that's above your pay grade?
No, to be honest, the Rudolph River Rovers just came about with some new miles, we got
some really ambitious club members that put a lot of time and effort in that area, and
they got, oh, it must be about 12 to 14 miles of what we call unfunded trail that they
went out on their own, and they established, they got the landowner's permission.
They picked areas where there wasn't a lot of tree removal or culverts that had to put
in, but with that, to get that $300 a mile funded, we got to go to the state, and right
now, because we have had lack of snow throughout our state, that fund is very down there.
We need to have a few good snowiers to build that up, because right now, the state is not
approving new miles, but this club is putting new miles up, so it is possible, and sometimes,
we do have landowners once in a while that do back, unfortunately, for different reasons,
you know, sometimes there's change of ownership, and they're not snowmobiliers, but then
we got to go through the process of rerouting, and I mean, that's a lot.
Yes, it is.
You know, sometimes you got it really nice and established, that's why we really have
to concentrate on staying on our trails and respecting our landowners, because they're
the ones that make it work.
Well said, well said, and thank you for all that great information, Dan, appreciate
it.
Especially what's going on over there in Rudolph.
I don't think a lot of us might have known about that, so I appreciate that info.
I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the winter recreation opportunities here in
Wood County in our Parks and Forestry Department with you, Chad, just a little bit.
Got some really fun things in this area that are going on that are up and coming, and
certainly we look forward to.
There's a lot of stuff that we kind of know, hey, this is here almost every year, we
look forward to it, we can't wait to get out there.
There's always new stuff too, what are some of the things coming up that we wanted to
tell people about?
Yeah, so I think what you're referring to maybe is Powers Bluff, right?
A lot of people are aware of that, but it is surprising when we do open how many people,
even in Wood County, have never been to that park, that we talked to up there.
So hopefully, we don't make snow up there, but like you said, you have the order, and
so we're going to get some snow this winter.
Once we get sufficient snow, we will operate up there mainly on weekends, Saturday,
Sundays, but we do have school groups that do come out during the week and things like
that.
So, snow tubing, snow skiing at Powers Bluff, we also have talking about volunteers, within
the last few years we've, and I've talked about this on the show before, but we've put
in multiple miles of trail up at Powers Bluff, additional trail, and we have a really, really
dedicated, it's a small group right now, and again, they're looking to grow.
We need more hands in that volunteer group, but they basically maintain those trails
at this point.
You know, we've got five and a half miles of single track mountain bike trail.
Most of those trails, besides the downhill, which would be a little bit too dangerous in
the winter months for grooming and people using it, but most of those miles are actually
groomed by this volunteer group for fat tire biking.
So that's obviously an increasing, up and coming sport, you know, it's getting more and
more, you know, more and more people are doing that, that my brother's trying to get me
into it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's definitely getting more and more popular.
Right.
Right.
In addition to those single track trails, there's also, excuse me, there's also multi-use trail.
So that is actually groomed.
It's a wider trail.
We set track for cross-country skiers.
People can snowshoe on that.
And then opposite side of the trail, opposite side is set for additional single track mountain
biking on that multi-use trail.
A lot of opportunities that powers bluff.
Not too far down the road, Richfield 360 County Forest.
We have multiple miles of again, multi-use trail.
So it's groomed for those three areas, fat tire biking, snowshoeing, and tracks set
for cross-country skiing.
So a lot of people, if they're ice fishermen and fish or women, they would go out to some
of our lakes we've got.
So we have access to Nebco Lake, Lake Waziccia, and Dexter Lake.
So we keep those areas plowed out.
There are some restrooms at each one of those locations for people to use.
So today is great, great ice making weather.
Hopefully last season, not only did we not have snow, we didn't have real good cold weather
for the ice fish or many there, so.
Yeah, and we didn't get a chance to really talk about that as much as we certainly talked
about the TV and snowmobiliers and that, and certainly deserves the time it did.
But I have so many friends, in fact, I think almost every one of my friends ice fish, and
they were very upset about that last year.
That is one of those ones there.
We're hoping to have that back this year.
Another great one to bring up, too.
Something to look forward to with some of these great areas that we have coming up.
And I also wanted to look at the current and future projects going on over in the Wood
County Parks and Forestry Department.
And I don't want to, you know, get any, get your trouble here and have you share something
you're not supposed to, but please share something you're not supposed to know about.
There is some great things going on over there, John.
Yeah, so, so we're just finishing up a pretty large project in, I guess, emergency management,
which is a department in Wood County.
We've been working with them.
Primarily, they were, they were kind of the grant writer for this project, and they're
going to be utilizing it as well, but it's basically a storm shelter at our Southwood
County Park.
So it's for that purpose.
If you're aware, or if you've been around here for a while, we have pretty frequently
had some pretty large storms, mainly, mainly around the state water ski show time, seems
like July is a pretty popular time.
It does, it does.
And there's a lot of people in that area, and not just that time, but we have a lot of
different events that go on in that park.
Obviously, the campground as well, the trail that goes around the lake, you know, a lot
of large community events are out there.
So, so it made sense to have an area where if something's going on, we have a storm event
coming through, you know, people can come into that and utilize that.
But you know, obviously, we're not constantly having storms.
So we made it, we designed it for the purpose of having it really as a multi-use shelter
building.
It's going to, it's going to benefit those that rent the adjacent open shelter.
So there's going to be some indoor flush toilets for them to use, instead of having to
use the vault toilets, utility sink, kind of a sink for cleaning up, things like that.
We also added some countertop and additional electric to that open shelter.
So that's going to benefit that shelter as well.
We haven't come up with the final policies procedures as far as when the actual storm
room or storm shelter can be rented, but it does have heat, it does have air conditioning.
So our intention is to actually have that reserveable four different events as well.
But again, we have to decide when we want to do that, obviously, anyone that would reserve
that would also have to open the doors for others to come in and, you know, in the event
of a large storm event or something like that.
So just adding another venue for different different people, different events to come
into Southwood County Park.
It's a great investment.
It's a great investment in our community, in our parks and forestry department.
It's another opportunity to make some funds that can help the department, help our community.
That's great.
I will say in a personal note too, it is a great place for a venue.
My sister had her wedding out there, the exact spot.
Man, it's one of the best weddings we've had in our family.
We had a blast out there.
It was a wonderful time.
And it's a great venue.
And then you add this on top of it.
There you go.
That's even better.
So it's a great opportunity, something to keep in mind with the upcoming one, wedding
season around the corner, some of that, or just events in general, family get together
as all of that.
Sure.
Sure.
So that was a large project.
We're just finishing up.
And again, we don't have it on our reservation site yet.
We still have to finalize what the policies are going to be in procedures and things like
that.
Another project that we're working on currently is we're building a new maintenance shop
up at Powers Bluff.
So if people that are aware or familiar with the park, there is an existing maintenance shop
up on top of the hill in the area of the shelter building, top of the tubing hill, area, things
like that.
It's adjacent to the communication tower that's up there.
Next year, that shop, we plan on removing and we would then have our operations at the
base of the hill off of highway and to the north.
So not really a facility for park users per se, but just more internal operations.
It's going to really improve things on our end.
Yeah.
And it's going to help users, going to help people using that park, whether they realize
it or not, it's certainly going to help you guys do your work.
It's really cool to hear.
That's great to hear.
Yeah.
So again, a lot of things going on at Powers Bluff, the highway department that we oftentimes
work with, they do a lot of work for us because of our projects that we have going on.
They just finished up recently doing the site prep for what is going to be the future trail
head shelter building.
So all these trails that were put in, you know, the long range plan was to basically have
a trail head shelter for trail users year round, but also having enclosed area again for
the purpose of having different community events, things like that.
What's kind of exciting, still in the talk and still talks phase, but we are looking at
again with those volunteer group up there, the trails group of actually hosting a couple
larger biking events next summer already.
Cool.
The intention when we started designing and building these trails was not only to have
it for the general public, but also to have facilities, trails, things like that that could
host these larger events, which obviously bring a lot of people into our communities, whether
they're going to be, you know, camping in our campgrounds or staying in Wisconsin rapids
or Marshfield hotels, you know, a couple of these events that we're talking about.
They bring in, you know, over 1000 people for these events.
These are revenue bills.
They got to stay somewhere, right?
Yeah, yeah.
They need somewhere, you know, like good stuff.
So we're excited about that.
And Chad, before we wrap up, I did want to mention there's also a great, you know, a cool
opportunity happening at Sarah Park.
Yes.
So, basically next, next Tuesday is the county board.
And at that county board meeting, they are going to consider and possibly vote on taking
over management and potentially within the next few years, taking over ownership of
that park.
So a lot of the listeners out here, I'm sure are familiar with Sarah Park, you know,
its history kind of stems from the paper mills and employees of those mills and it's
kind of evolved over the years where the last multiple years it has been open to the
general public as well.
But it's pretty exciting opportunity for us.
The owners of the property quip co or consolidated water power company approached myself, approached
Wood County just to kind of see if we would consider taking over the management of that.
And I kind of ran up the flagpole and there was a lot of support for my committee and other
county board members.
So stay tuned, you know, whenever you take over, this is my
first, first go around with taking over an existing property and facilities and things
like that.
There's a lot of unknowns as far as, you know, condition of property, equipment, all
that good stuff.
So be patient, but I'm very confident if this goes through, we're going to get it up
to up to snuff up to our standards, very quality campground and park and shelter facilities
moving into the future.
So next year being our 90th, 90th year, it's kind of a cool thing.
We would start that lease essentially as of January 1st and hopefully for the next, I
don't know, 90, 90, 100 years, we'll have another park in the system and really have
a quality place for people to go.
You can tell Chad how good Chad is at this.
He waited to the end to drop that one.
That's a big one.
That's a big story right there.
We're going to grow a dumpster, but first off, really does give some good, I would say
a really good vibe to it with them reaching out first.
That's certainly a good sign and that certainly is something.
You don't see that every day with that and that's an interesting part of this, but the
revenue building that that can be, the different thing that could be for communities and stuff.
I've heard nothing but good things about that park, since I've lived out here and everything.
So the idea of it being even more accessible to people or it being even maybe brought up
more or something.
There's nothing but positives from my ankle on this one.
It's really cool to hear.
Thank you for sharing that chat.
That's really interesting.
We're excited.
It definitely adds work to our already full workload, but we'll get her done.
As we're getting done here, and we'll talk more about this story, of course, as we
next time we join us and everything, and please keep us in mind when you get some news
on that one.
But we do want to remind everybody as well that our Wood County Parks and Forestry Department
have gift certificates available.
It's a great gift for somebody.
Keep that in mind this holiday season.
And certainly wanted people to be able to reach out to you guys for questions if they
had any follow-up questions.
So Dan, if people want to reach out to you, how can they get in touch with you and find
out more?
Well, you can always call the Wood County Parks Office.
They usually roll them to either chat or I, you know, for any questions.
We keep each other informed if one knows where we're bought something and the other for
the lowest part.
And if somebody's out of the office or usually somebody's available, I mean, it parks
numbers 421-8422, I mean, yeah.
That is the rapids number.
Keep that in mind.
We, of course, our Wood County Parks and Forestry Department covers Marshfield, Pittsville,
and Auburndale.
So if you're living in one of those areas, you're going to have a different number.
You can find that number at woodcountywi.gov, woodcountywi.gov.
Otherwise give them a call of 715-421-8400-428400 and be sure to follow them on social media
and get a great way to keep up the data on things that are going on over there.
Get yourself one of those gift certificates, volunteer with some of the activities going
on over there, and help our friends over at the Parks and Forestry Department.
Thanks for joining us guys.
Appreciate the time.
Thanks for having us.
We'll be back with more Midday Magazine right here on 97-5 FM 1320 AM, WFHR.
