Bubolz Nature Preserve 2025 09

This week we went to Bubolz Nature Preserve. Situated on the north side of Appleton, less than fifteen minutes from my home.

Key Features

• Extensive Trail System: The preserve has over 8.5 miles of trails that are open year-round from dawn to dusk. The trails are used for hiking, walking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing.
• Diverse Ecosystems: Bubolz features a unique mix of habitats, including upland and lowland hardwood forests, white cedar forests, tall and shortgrass prairies, wet meadows, ponds, and streams.
• Educational Programs: The preserve offers a wide range of environmental education programs for all ages, including field trips, summer camps, and homeschool classes. Topics cover everything from animal tracking to mycology and maple syrup production.
• The Lodge Environmental Center: A key feature is The Lodge, a modern and sustainable building that serves as the environmental center. It’s used for educational programs, events, and can be rented for meetings and gatherings. It also has a library with field guides.
• Kenna’s Kabin: Located inside The Lodge, this is an interactive, nature-themed play area for children aged 10 and under, complete with a slide, puzzles, games, and a children’s library.
• Year-Round Recreation: The preserve is a four-season destination. In the warmer months, visitors can enjoy hiking and wildlife viewing, while winter activities include cross-country skiing and snowshoeing with equipment rentals available.
• Wildlife Viewing: Bubolz is a great spot for nature and wildlife enthusiasts. Visitors can see a variety of animals, including birds like bobolinks and northern harriers, as well as turtles, frogs, deer, and red foxes.
• Free Admission: There is no entrance fee to visit the preserve and use the trails, though donations are accepted to help with maintenance and operations.
• Accessibility: The preserve has amenities that make it accessible for many visitors, including a wheelchair-accessible entrance, toilet, and car park.
• Family-Friendly Activities: Beyond the trails and educational programs, Bubolz offers fun for the whole family with activities like geocaching, a natural play area with “hobbit holes,” and a turtle pond where you can feed the turtles.

Review

This post has been a long time coming. As we thought about starting this site, Bubolz was obviously on our list. However I am not really a fan of this place.

Don’t get me wrong, this is definitely a place to visit if you have never had the chance. But most people in the Fox Valley area visit Bubolz on an elementary school field trip. How do you introduce people to a place they’ve already been.

Also the trails are not the best. To give you some back ground I need to describe the environment on the preserve and the surrounding area.

Appleton is built on the ridges around the Fox River as it races toward Lake Michigan. Bubolz lies in a low point between this ridge and the next line of hills.

So Bubolz is effectively a wooded marsh or bog. An area I would call a mosquito factory. Wet boggy soil with shallow stagnant ponds. To combat the wet marshy soil, the trails are a combination of chipped wood, mowed grass, logs, sticks and/or gravel.

After last week we decided to visit Bubolz as it would be a quick drive. The fall temperatures would keep the mosquitos and bugs at bay. But Wisconsin weather is never something to rely on.

The temperature at Bubolz was in the upper 70s. Luckly though the cool temperatures from the previous weeks was enough to cut down the number of mosquitos.

We started our hike by deciding which trail we would walk. Knowing our ability we decided to hike the 4.5 mile Wilderness Trail. But we soon found that this trail was closed. So we instead took a meandering route through parts of the four season, white cedar, deer run, and north prairie trails.

In our wandering we would see a few groups and a couple of solo hikers. The birds were few and far between. And those few we saw were quick to move as I tried to photograph them.

However as we got to the section of the deer run trail along the stream we were greeted by a cacophony of Blue Jays angry at something. The problem was every time we moved to find the Blue Jays they seemed to move. However we did finally see the small hawk that was causing them to be so angry.

When it came to wild life it was a bugs life kind of hike. Butterflies, moths and dragonflies were the majority of what we saw.

And even though the temperature felt like summer the trees were starting to change. Red, brown and yellow leaves are starting to come out. And with the current cadence of my post you should be able to see the changes as we go this fall.

We had a good walk but we probably won’t go back to Bubolz soon. I don’t want to discourage you from visiting but Bubolz is not a great place to hike.

The focus of the people who run the property seems to be more on the education aspect of nature. One of the first things I see on the website of Bubolz is their push to educate on the sustainability. They push the popular views of environmentalism.

The problem is that Solar Panels and Electric Vehicles are not as environmentally conscience as they seem. The process of creating the batteries and the panels produce toxic chemicals.

The panels at Bubolz take up about an acre of land that cannot be used for anything else. Then the property has another acre of blacktop parking. I wonder why they couldn’t put the solar panels above the parking area to minimize the impact on nature.

To me it seems like Bubolz has started to focus more on the feel good about preserving nature rather than actually preserving nature. Put the money you get from donations back into trail system. That way you can draw more visitors and more donation money that can be used to actually clean up the environment.

But my voice is the minority when it comes to the current mindset in nature conservancy. The best way for any individual to clean up the environment is to make sure they are properly disposing of their own trash and minimize the trash they make by recycling when able to.

Anyway please do visit this site if you get a chance. Thank you for reading and sorry if this one got a little too preachy. Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. But note, I won’t get into a debate with you in the comments, and I will remove anything that is rude to other commenters.