The Lower Yahara Boardwalk Is Actually Two Rides Right Now. Which One You Pick Depends on Dinner.

If you live along the south lakes, you already know the Lower Yahara River Trail is the reason houses on Waubesa Avenue and Larson Beach Road hold their value the way they do. What you may not have worked out yet is that the boardwalk you rode in July is not the boardwalk your neighbor is talking about when they say they biked to Springers last Friday. Those are two different trails, and the two-mile gap between them is doing more to shape your August evenings than the weather.

The practical question for a McFarland resident this month is not where does the trail go. It is which end do I start from tonight, and the honest answer depends entirely on what you want on your plate when you stop pedaling.

The gap that decides your evening

Phase 1 of the trail opened in 2017 and runs roughly 2.5 miles from Lake Farm County Park to McDaniel Park in McFarland, along the north shore of Lake Waubesa. It is the longest multi-use boardwalk in Wisconsin, which is not a marketing claim, it is a Dane County one. Phase 2 opened in July 2024 after a little over a year of construction and about $6.5 million in county money, and it runs another two miles along the north bank of Lake Kegonsa between Fish Camp County Park and Lake Kegonsa State Park.

Those two segments do not touch. A rider leaving McDaniel Park who wants to keep going has to jump onto Highway AB for nearly two miles before rejoining the trail at Fish Camp. Bike lanes went in on that stretch a couple of years ago, but as one Madison Bikes board member put it in the same reporting, trails like this are becoming "nearly impossible" to build now, and Highway AB is the reason a lot of casual riders turn around at McDaniel and call it a night.

The trail is finished on both ends and unfinished in the middle. That single fact is what you are actually planning around when you decide where to start.

Once you accept the gap, the choice gets easier. Each end has one waterfront restaurant that catches most of the boardwalk traffic, and they are not interchangeable.

If you want Green Lantern, start at Lake Farm

The Green Lantern sits on Lake Waubesa in the wooden ice-house that, per the restaurant's own telling, once flagged down trains hauling cut ice toward Chicago and, so the legend goes, Al Capone's cooling needs. The building is still there. The Yahara chain traffic pulls up by boat, and the road bikers pull up from Siggelkow.

The efficient sequence from the north side is to leave a car at Lake Farm County Park, ride Phase 1 south across the boardwalk, exit at McDaniel Park in the village, and then either ride the short village stretch over to Siggelkow or arrange a pickup. This is the ride that ends with a fish fry and a walk out to the dock. It is not the ride that ends with live music, and that matters, because most Friday nights in August the live music is on the other lake.

If you want Springers, start at Fish Camp

Springers on the north shore of Lake Kegonsa runs live patio music every Friday from 5:30 to 8:30 through the summer, weather permitting. For August 2026 the posted lineup is:

• Aug. 7 — Lisa B
• Aug. 14 — KT Johnson
• Aug. 21 — Dusty Road
• Aug. 28 — Bill Vinson
• Sept. 4 — Lisa B (returning to open the shoulder season)

That schedule is the reason locals who live closer to McDaniel Park sometimes drive south to Fish Camp before they ride. Phase 2 drops you almost at the door. The trail here is a mix of asphalt and elevated boardwalk over Door Creek and the marsh, quieter than Phase 1, with fewer of the joggers-with-strollers and more of the anglers who came in for the accessible fishing pier that Dane County added at Fish Camp during the Phase 2 build.

If you are working the ride around the music, the useful thing to know is that the patio fills between 6:00 and 6:30. Riders coming from Lake Kegonsa State Park who arrive at 5:45 tend to get seated. Riders arriving at 7:15 tend to eat inside.

The Wednesday alternative most people miss

For residents who want the walk without the drive-and-ride logistics, Arnold Larson Park in the village runs the McFarland Lions' Food Cart Frenzy on the third Wednesday of the month from 5:00 to 7:00, June through September, with proceeds going to the club's local giving. It is a two-block detour off the trail, and it is the shortest possible summer evening plan that still counts as going out. August's is the second-to-last of the year. September's is your last shot until 2027.

What the LWCA is doing on the shoulder weeks

If you follow the Lake Waubesa Conservation Association calendar, the August lull is real. The July anchor event, Love Our Lakes / Bands by the Boardwalk at McDaniel Park, has already come and gone for the year. The next LWCA date on the water is a September bike ride from Green Lantern to Christy's Landing at 2952 Waubesa Avenue, tentatively scheduled to coincide with a Badger home game once the football schedule shakes out.

The point is not that August is quiet. The point is that August is the last month the boardwalks belong mostly to residents rather than to the event calendar. If you have been meaning to do the Phase 2 ride and have not, this is the window.

Why the two halves still aren't stitched together

The connective tissue between McDaniel Park and Fish Camp runs through the Lower Mud Lake Natural Resource Area, and the county has been slowly buying the property it needs to build it. Phase 2 sped along in part because Dane County already owned the land it crossed. The remaining phases run through a patchwork of county and private parcels, and Wisconsin's 2017 removal of eminent domain for trail acquisition means every one of those parcels has to be bought willingly.

County parks manager Chris James, quoted in the same reporting, has said publicly that he expects the rest of the project to wrap in four or five years. The Foundation for Dane County Parks puts the eventual length at close to twenty miles, tying downtown Madison to Viking County Park near Stoughton by way of Capital Springs, Lunney Lake Farm, and both south lakes. Whether that finishes in 2029 or 2031, most people reading this will still be in their current house when it does.

For now, the practical planning tool is a mental map with a hole in the middle. You choose an end. You choose a restaurant. You do not try to link them on the same ride.

The one thing to write down

Green Lantern is a Waubesa evening off Phase 1. Springers with music is a Kegonsa evening off Phase 2. Food Cart Frenzy is a village Wednesday. The two-mile Highway AB stretch will still be there in September, and the LWCA calendar picks up again once the football schedule prints.

That is the whole map of August, and it is more useful than a trail brochure precisely because it accounts for what the trail cannot do yet.

If you own a home along the south lakes and you are thinking about what your shoreline access is actually worth as the boardwalk keeps extending, or you have been watching listings on either side of Lake Waubesa and want a sober read on what a completed Madison-to-Stoughton corridor does to values three doors from a trailhead, that is the kind of question the team at Kristine Jaeger works on every week. Book a free neighborhood consultation and we will walk the map with you.