Sunday Park Inspections

Today we drove out to Mount Horeb to try the walking paths at Stewart County Park. But when we got there, I don't know if we had known this and forgotten it, the whole site was deep in mud from the dredging project for the lake. I started out the day feeling deep fatigue and sore all over, and was beginning to recover with a half a pain med, but didn't really want to go through that much mud.

Instead we went over to Blue Mounds State Park, a heavily-used park, and on a Sunday afternoon full of both skiers and snowshoers. We spent an hour following the pink-blazed hiking and snowshoe trail, only to work out that there were more trails so marked than appear on the actual map handed out and highlighted by the nice ranger stationed at the gate. After following for twenty minutes or so a marked snowshoe track that was not used enough by hikers, we decided dropping through the crust into knee-deep snow was not what we were equipped for (Jon didn't even have high boots), we finally got oriented, between the low afternoon sun, the ski trails we crossed, and the paved road we were expecting to cross that never seemed to be in the right place. It was a whole hour before we got back to the car, within about a quarter mile radius, through a very nice little wood full of snow-covered gneiss boulders. "Gneiss and Easy Trail", right.

Another time we might try that bike trail again, which in the winter is a hiking trail. Or we might wait until summer when we can use the big nature trails that are in the winter dedicated ski trails. There's also a nice trail from the east observation tower, down a very steep slope, and back up, that would be a strenuous couple miles through the snow, on a day when I was fresher, that we spent another twenty minutes looking at, although we didn't even climb the observation tower. The circuit of the paved parking lots at the top of Blue Mound gives excellent views for miles in all directions. Lots of snow damage to the trees out there, from the heavy snows last month. A gneiss boulder shelter. Gneiss fireplaces. Gneiss scenery! Probably a gigantic glacial drumlin? with lots of glacial till. Lots of trails, in short, when we want to get out of town, not too far.