Posts tagged #County Park

Hiking Magnolia Bluff County Park in Wisconsin

Adventure Tuesday

Magnolia Bluff

    As I have mentioned earlier there are two different types of parks, State Parks where you pay an entrance fee, and then the County Parks that are completely free!!

    There aren't any real mountains in Wisconsin, but there are some cliffs, bluffs and hills. This hike is literally just up a hill/bluff where you can see some views, and then the trail continues into the forest.

    But what a forest. It's a beautiful oak forest, mixed with other deciduous species.

    As many other trails we have ventured out on, these trails are used both by hikers and and cross country skiers during the wintertime. Here, you can also run into a horse or two, as there is excellent horseback riding too, and who wouldn't want to ride along into a deep oak forest?

    More trees, as we continued our walk, and more plants, fungi and insects! Here in Wisconsin there are lots of different types of vines, growing up the tree trunks, they are so pretty. You can see their attachment to the tree trunks, it's pretty fascinating.

    Of course I couldn't help myself and took a lot of pictures of all the tiny little details I could see.

    Eventually at the end of the trail we got into this interesting pine forest, which must have been planted, but we aren't sure. After that, we arrived at the same place where we started, at the bluff. One thing is for sure though, it was a very pretty walk through the forest!

    Do you have a favorite forest to walk through? I am excited about the fall colors in all of these deciduous forests!

Hiking Indian Lake County Park in Wisconsin

 

Adventure Tuesday

Indian Lake County Park

    A county park is a park set up by the state, compared to a state park that is under the sub-national level. Personally I am not completely clear what the exact difference is, however, just as any other park we have been to in Wisconsin Indian Lake was extremely beautiful. 

 
 

    As many other parks here in Wisconsin they are even maintained during the wintertime and you can cross-country ski there. We will definetely come back here in the wintertime to ski, well, if we even get enough snow this winter..

 
 

    A few minutes after we started we began to climb some stairs to get up a hill. Clearly this trail up the hill hadn't been used in a long time, and we discovered on the way down that there, of course, was a different route to use, a more used route. Either way, we got up the hill and arrived at an old chapel.

 
 

    Along the trail there are a lot of benches where you can sit down and rest, if you need to. All these benches are donated by families and friends that are remembering a loved one. This Chapel we arrived at was built by european settlers in 1857. Can you believe that someone actually stole the original wooden altar in the 80s?

 
 

    After the small detour to the chapel we continued our hike, in the 85-90℉ degree (30℃) weather, and yeah we didn't bring any mosquito spray. In Alaska if you forget your mosquito spray you are totally screwed, you are not getting out alive. Here however, well we got out alive. The trail was winding through deep deciduous forest and open grassland. 

 
 

    As always I got to caught up into the details of all pretty wildflowers, and the insects. Hopefully you'll appreciate the pictures.

 
 

    Eventually we took a wrong turn and got back to where we started a little too early. But since the mosquitoes were eating us and the weather was hot and humid I was pretty happy about that. We also ran into the great black wasp, which isn't as dangerous as it looks with its 20-35 mm long body, but yeah, size wise very very intimidating. That's when I decided that it definitely was time to leave. 

 
 

    Have you ever seen any interesting insects?