The Getting There

Coffee, trails, and the places that become part of us.

There’s something special about a trailside cafe.

Something to look forward to on a long ride, an apres-run destination with your race training crew. A welcome oasis on a hot day. A warm refuge after a winter hike.

Wisconsin has an unfair advantage when it comes to trailside cafés. Thanks to an extraordinary network of rails-to-trails, you can spend an entire day following the gentle grades of former railroad corridors that wind through quiet woods, alongside rivers, and into small towns you might otherwise speed past without a second glance. Many of them have a café waiting just off the trail, like the trail knew where you were really headed all along.

And there’s something particularly fitting about finding a coffee shop alongside a rail trail. The railroad once carried people from town to town in search of work, family, or adventure. Today, those same corridors carry cyclists, runners, walkers, and anyone else in search of a few unhurried miles. The destinations have changed and the reasons for the journey have changed. But the simple human desire to go somewhere, and to have somewhere worth arriving, hasn’t changed at all.

And worth arriving, they are. Usually small, cozy. They're rarely fancy. If they are, they're probably doing it wrong. The best ones aren't polished or curated. They wear their history openly: mismatched chairs, local art, a bulletin board layered with years of business cards and handwritten notices. Bike helmets hang from chair backs. Muddy shoes don't apologize. Someone is debating whether they've earned the cinnamon roll after twenty miles while the person across the table has already taken the first bite. My favorite locations give new life to an old building, a historic bank reimagined as a coffee counter, or an old farmhouse serving up cafe food.

I would argue that equally there’s something equally special in the getting-there. We spend so much of life trying to eliminate the trip: Faster routes. Delivery apps. Drive-thrus. The trail does the opposite. It reminds you that arriving is sweeter when you've spent a few intentional miles getting there.

I think many of us yearn for a journey. It’s why we leave our perfectly fine homes for long treks, vacations abroad, road trips and rugged camping excursions. The destination is great, but so many of the best moments, the best stories, happen during the getting-there.

Trails are especially funny that way. Walk the same stretch often enough and they begin collecting versions of you. The nervous new runner wondering if six miles was even possible. The cyclist trying to squeeze in one more ride before work. The woman who nearly had a cardiac event thanks to an ill-timed squirrel appearance while listening to an especially convincing true crime podcast. They're all still there somehow, tucked between the bends in the path.

A trailside coffee shop invites some great people watching. No one knows each other, but everyone somehow belongs. You can almost tell what kind of morning someone has had by the way they carry their helmet, lace their shoes, or wrap both hands around a mug. Some are celebrating a personal record. Others are simply grateful they made it out the door. The coffee is the common denominator, but it isn't really why anyone came.

Maybe that's what keeps drawing me back to places like this. They're proof that the best destinations aren't really destinations at all. They're punctuation marks, little commas in a day that would otherwise rush straight from one obligation to the next.

Location: Mama D’s, Wales, Wisconsin