Check two sources on the Wisconsin Fall Colors Run this week and you'll get two different answers. Search for the race and you'll land on registration pages confirming the 9th Annual Wisconsin Fall Colors Run happens Saturday, September 12, at Wayside Park, organized by Fontana Sports Specialties. Check the Lodi Valley Chapter of the Ice Age Trail Alliance, the very group the race benefits, and its own page still says the run has been postponed until further notice because of long-term construction near the trail.
One of those is current. One of those hasn't been updated. If you're planning your Saturday around it, that gap matters more than any weather forecast.
The Race That Officially Isn't Happening
The Fall Colors Run has run out of Lodi for years, tracing the Lodi Valley Segment of the Ice Age Trail with a course that climbs the Gibraltar Rock Segment for views of Lake Wisconsin and Devil's Lake from the bluffs. This year's event starts and finishes at Wayside Park on State Road 113, with an 8-mile run kicking off at 9:00 a.m., a 4-mile run/walk at 9:05, and a rolling 2-mile start between 9:10 and 10:00. Packet pickup runs from 8:00 to 8:45 that morning, and awards go out at 11:00.
Every registration includes a $20 donation back to the Lodi Valley Chapter, the same chapter whose own page tells visitors the event isn't happening. That's not a small oversight. It's the organization that directly benefits from the race, publishing information that would talk someone out of registering. If you searched "Fall Colors Run Lodi" last week and stopped at the chapter's site, you'd have crossed it off your calendar. The actual event organizers, and every third-party listing tracking it, say otherwise.
This is worth flagging beyond one Saturday in September. It's a reminder that the group closest to a piece of local infrastructure isn't always the group with the current information about it. For a town this size, checking one source and calling it settled is how you miss things.
What Else Is Already Turning Over
The race isn't an isolated data point. It's landing in the middle of a broader handoff that Lodi goes through every year around this time, and this year the pieces aren't moving at the same speed.
| What | Status as of early September 2026 |
|---|---|
| Merrimac Ferry | Running daily, free, connecting Lodi and Merrimac across Lake Wisconsin |
| Farmers Market | Fridays through October, next to Koltes Do-It Center |
| First Friday Art Walk | One date left, the first Friday in October |
| Goeres Park pool | Already closed, alert posted August 16 |
| Lodi Curling Club leagues | Not yet underway, season builds through fall |
The ferry is the piece most people assume will be around all fall, and for now it is. The Colsac III opened for the 2026 season back in March and typically runs April through November. But "typically" did real work last year. The 2025 season carried 208,823 vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians across 39,734 crossings before the Wisconsin Department of Transportation shut it down on November 29 due to freezing conditions, not a scheduled date. The ferry doesn't close on a calendar. It closes on a cold snap. If you're planning a fall trip across the lake, the safer assumption is sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile the pool at Goeres Park is already done for the year, weeks ahead of when a Wisconsin summer schedule would normally wind down. The Farmers Market and the First Friday Art Walk are still going, but the art walk has exactly one date left on the books before it goes quiet until next May.
None of this is a coordinated shutdown. It's four separate systems on four separate timelines, and if you're used to Lodi's summer rhythm carrying through September, this is the month where that rhythm actually breaks apart.
The Building That Picks Up the Slack
While the outdoor season is unwinding piece by piece, one of the town's oldest institutions is getting ready to take over. The Lodi Curling Club was founded in December 1880 by James Otis Eaton and James Wilson, which puts it at 146 years old this year. Its current building started life as an Army mess hall at Madison's Truax Field, sold off as surplus after World War II and moved to Lodi in time for the 1949 season. It's been standing on Fair Street ever since.
The club runs a full slate of leagues once the season gets going: a Monday Dinner League capped at five teams with a long waiting list, a Monday Night league for curlers with five years of experience or less, Tuesday and Wednesday open leagues, a moderately competitive Thursday Night league, and a Friday Lunch League where the off-duty team cooks for everyone else. Lodi's high school has folded curling into its winter athletics, which is not a common line item for a school district this size.
The point isn't that curling is quaint. It's that Lodi's social calendar doesn't have a gap between outdoor season and winter. It has a handoff, and the curling club is the institution that's been running that handoff for nearly a century and a half. The building that took in surplus Army lumber in 1949 is still the thing that keeps the town's evenings full once the ferry line thins out and the farmers market tables come down.
What This Means If You're Planning Your Month
If you're mapping out September and October in Lodi, a few things are worth locking in now rather than assuming you'll catch them later.
Register for the Fall Colors Run through Fontana Sports Specialties or a current event listing, not the trail alliance's own chapter page, if you want accurate information on whether it's happening. It is, on September 12, and the money still goes to the same trail work the chapter's outdated page claims is on hold.
Don't wait on the ferry. It's running now, but last year's closure came from a cold front, not a posted end date, and there's no reason to expect this November to work differently. If a fall crossing to Merrimac or a day trip toward Devil's Lake State Park is on your list, earlier beats later.
The Farmers Market has weeks left, every Friday through October, next to Koltes Do-It Center. The First Friday Art Walk does not. One date remains, the first Friday of October, running its usual 5 to 9 p.m. window downtown.
And if you're the kind of household that treats winter as something to plan for rather than something that happens to you, this is the month to look at the Lodi Curling Club's league schedule. The Monday Dinner League fills fast and keeps a waiting list. The other leagues, especially the ones built for curlers with five years of experience or less, are a lower-friction way into a sport that's been part of this town since before Wisconsin had paved roads to it.
Lodi's fall doesn't arrive all at once. It arrives in pieces, on different clocks, and the town's own institutions don't always agree on which piece is where. Knowing that is the difference between planning your month around what's actually happening and planning it around whichever page you happened to load first.
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