Perrot State Park and the Sparta Trail Start
Driving from La Crosse to Norwalk, Wisconsin | Hiking in Perrot State Park | Hiking a Section of the Elroy-Sparta State Trail | June 2026
As soon as we returned home from Portugal, we knew we wanted to take on another long distance trail. We were already accustomed to walking long distances every day and wanted to stay in shape. Since we were planning on traveling to Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, we started looking for more long distance trails that we could walk in sections and camp nearby, like we did in April on the Hennepin trail. There are no shortage of bike trails, rail trails, and canal trails in the Midwest, the hard part is finding ones that allow you to camp at or near the trailheads (but not in expensive privately owned campgrounds). We ended up deciding on the Elroy-Sparta trail in Wisconsin. It was on our way (and in new counties), short enough that we could probably finish most of it over a long weekend, there were options for camping nearby, and from what we had heard about it we believed it would be somewhat scenic, especially with the long historic tunnels along the trail. We planned to spend most of our first weekend back on the road section hiking the trail.
On our second day on the road, we woke up in La Crosse a bit later than we would have liked, but were also unsure with how to proceed with the day. A last minute meeting had been added to Curtis’ schedule smack dab in the middle of the day. We had been planning on hiking our first sections today, but now we didn’t have enough time to complete the two we had planned on (we already knew the sections would probably have to be longer than the Hennepin Canal Trail based on where we could park).
After thinking on it through breakfast, we decided instead to spend a little more time hiking on the Mississippi bluffs and drove the half hour North to Perrot State Park near Trempealeau. I had had this park starred on my map for a while, and today felt like the right day since we already had an annual state park pass. This ended up being a fantastic decision. Once in the park we hiked the Brady’s Bluff trail to the top where we were greeted with panoramic views up and down the Mississippi River valley. Perrot State Park preserves an ‘island’ of bluffs that sit right next to the river, but are physically separated from the main line of bluffs. Quite literally mountains in the middle of the river valley. Trempealeau, the nearby town and name of one of the peaks, comes from the French “la montagne qui trempe à l’eau” meaning “the mountain whose foot is bathed in water”.
After reaching the top of Brady’s Bluff we took a circuitous route back down. Closer to the van, we split ways so that Curtis could go to the top of Perrot Ridge in search of a Letterbox. He was unsuccessful. Altogether our hike was just over 4 miles long. Once back at the van we drove into the town of Trempealeau for a quick errand and to see the river more clearly and then continued further East to the town of Sparta where we parked at a trailhead for Curtis’ mid-day meeting.
Once the meeting was over we took stock of our situation. It was now after 1 on a Friday. We had been hoping to walk the Sparta-Elroy trail from where we were in Sparta to…Elroy. Or rather we were hoping to have a nice linear trail that we could camp freely along and have next to no worries. Unfortunately, it was peak summer, the number of campgrounds was less than we realized as we were entering into a weekend. The campgrounds we could look at online were all booked up except for some tent sites, and even those were scarce. But in the town of Norwalk, right off the trail we saw there was a ‘village campground’. The website was broken. They didn’t answer the phone. And the google reviews were vague. We decided to give it a shot in hopes that all these roadblocks had turned everyone else off it.
Once we made it to Norwalk we found the campground with no one set up. It was a very basic lot with several empty campsites marked only with electric boxes. No kiosk in sight. No rules board. We walked to the library nearby to ask what they knew about it, where they referred us to village hall, which was closed. BUT here we finally found the campground rules and rates. $45 a night! However tent camping right next to the campground was free? We made the quick decision to park in the tent camping lot since we didn’t need electric or water. If anyone had a problem with us, we had a tent that we could set up outside.
Once we felt like we had a sleeping situation squared away for at least a night, we decided to continue on with our plan to section hike the rail trail. It was already 2 pm so we didn’t expect to make it far, but we started walking Northwest back towards Sparta. As far as rail trails go, the Sparta-Elroy rail has several notables. First: it is the FIRST rail to trail conversion project in the United States, opening to the public in 1967. Second are three hand dug train tunnels through the ridges that make up the driftless region of Wisconsin. We made it our goal to make it to Tunnel #3 for the day.
The trail was mostly shaded but occasionally gave glimpses of the surrounding hilly landscape. As we approached the tunnel we passed by a small historic park that included a Tunnel Keepers House and a very elaborate stone flume. The tunnel was very impressive, almost 3/4 of a mile long. While we had brought flashlights, we had neglected to bring an umbrella. It turned out that this one is the wettest of the 3 tunnels, with constant water droplets coming down, it might as well be raining. We didn’t make it very far before turning back, though we definitely got an idea for how long and dark the inside of these tunnels can be!
Altogether, today’s hike was almost 7 1/2 miles long. We enjoyed having another goal to work towards together, even though we were realizing that we probably wouldn’t be able to finish this entire trail in the time we had allotted. The first section that we had skipped from Sparta to the tunnel was 8 miles one way, or 16 for us since we have to walk out and back, and we couldn’t figure out a way to break it down. However, we had also noticed how there were other trails that continued on further East and West than this trail, such as the 400 State Trail and the La Crosse River State Trail, so we could easily find much more to do if we found ourselves back in this area. Such is our life as travelers — whenever we visit one place or hike one trail, we learn about more places and trails that we need to see, and so our list never grows shorter! But for now, we were happy that we had chosen this trail, and were looking forward to walking a lot more of it over the weekend. We returned to Norwalk where we made dinner at the van, and enjoyed a quiet night here.
