Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin

Rain.

Rain.

Rain.

This is getting ridiculous. 

A quick review of weather over the last two months revealed that on average, we’ve had a severe weather alert every three days and more than a half inch of rain every five days. Our last night in Two Rivers brought just over two inches of rain in three hours. It’s predicted to rain another two to five inches in the next two days in our current location. Enough, already!

A hundred and sixty eight miles southeast of Duluth lies Chippewa Falls. We’re tucked into site thirteen at the Northern Wisconsin Fairgrounds Campground. 

This is a working stop for us. We’ve been a bit lazy with trailer maintenance and necessary shopping and cleaning, so it’s time to catch up. There are several interesting things to do in Chippewa Falls, so we’ll try to squeeze in a bit of site seeing in between chores.

On a shopping expedition we caught a glimpse of the falls as we went by. There’s a nice park nearby, but no parking that we could see, so we kept going. A trip to the grocery store, a stop at Sashas favorite store, Petsmart, and a couple of hours in the local laundromat just about filled a day. And it rained.

A thorough top to bottom cleaning of the trailer was required, so we spent the better part of a midday doing that, and as we finished and got ready to go downtown and maybe figure out how to get to the falls…it started raining.

So, our site seeing in Chippewa Falls has been limited to a view of the cooling towers at the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company, which is about 50 yards away from our camp!

And it’s raining.

Chippewa Falls is an old city of about 15,000 residents, and has a history in the timber industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the timber ran out, other industries filled the gap, a shoe factory, a glove manufacturing facility, railroading and in the 20th century, a center of computing as Cray Research , founded by Seymour Cray, developer of the fastest supercomputer of its day. Cray Research has been absorbed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Chippewa Falls is a lesser neighbor to Eau Claire, and contents itself with “Leine” beer and Mason Shoes. 

Late in the afternoon the rain stopped and we decided to try for the falls and a walk through Riverfront Park. The Chippewa River is running at near capacity and is putting on quite a show.

The trees along the riverbank tell a tale of too much rain!

It’s been a quiet, and damp stay at the fairgrounds, but enjoyable and necessary. We’ve on the road again tomorrow!