We report recent efforts by CLS to generate an ensemble with physical light- and strange-quark masses in a lattice volume of $96^3x192$ at $\beta=3.55$ corresponding to a lattice spacing of 0.064fm. This ensemble is being generated as part of the CLS 2+1 flavor effort with improved Wilson fermions. Our simulations currently cover 5 lattice spacings ranging from 0.039fm to 0.086fm at various pion masses along chiral trajectories with either the sum of the quark masses kept fixed, or with the strange-quark mass at the physical value. The current status of simulations is briefly reviewed including a short discussion of measured autocorrelation times and of the main features of the simulations. We then proceed to discuss the thermalization strategy employed for the generation of the physical quark-mass ensemble and present first results for some simple observables. Challenges encountered in the simulation will be highlighted.