Posts tagged #green

I don't Hike, I Saunter

"I Don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike!"
- John Muir

Wednesday Thoughts

I Saunter

Anyone who has ever gone hiking with me can attest to the fact that I am slow, very slow. I see so many pretty things and I want to document them all. So, I saunter. I Saunter through the mountains but my focus is often times on the forest floor, the stone in the stream or the spider next to the trail. I usually say "How amazing is this" or "Wow! How lucky are we to be right here, right now". I love to be out in nature.

What about you? Do you Saunter?

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Pine Cliff and Lakeview Trails

Adventure Tuesday

I know the weeks seem to go awfully fast and September is already upon us. Although, no fall weather here yet since the temperatures were in the upper 80's this past weekend.

Pine Cliff and Lakeview Trails

We went to Governor Dodge state park again, and as I mentioned before these parks are fairly big with lots of different trails. This time around we decided to do a hike around the lake called the pine cliff trail, and also a smaller hike called the lakeview trail. Again these parks never seem to cease to amaze me. They are always a mix of deep forest, fields of wildflowers and if you are lucky even some cliffs. We started of in the forest before we climbed up the ridge line.

You start by walking through a dense stand of deciduous trees, and work yourself towards a more pine dominated vegetation.

There are of course a ton of small details to look at as you move through the forest, much to W's despair.

The main attraction is just like the name gives away, a pine cliff, that is a cliff with lots of pine growing upon it.

I am always so amazed that trees and plants for that matter can grow in places with practically no soil.

Eventually we worked our way down the ridge and came back down towards the lake.

With a thin layer of topsoil I was not surprised to encounter this area, where apparently a tornado went through a long time ago.

These trails can also be used during the wintertime for crosscountry skiing. I just wish we will get enough snow to be able to get out this winter.

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.

Trailhead

Apple Tree

Trail Sign

Gray-Headed Coneflower

Into the forest

W behind all the flowers and grass

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..

Wild Carrot

Stairs

Creeping Vine

Tall Bellflower

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?

Trail up to the Chapel

Bench dedication

Fields of Flowers

Chapel description

Inside the Chapel

View from the hill

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.

In the forest

The open field

Sign along the trail system

Forest crown

Out of the forest

The open field and wildflowers

Wildflowers

Mowed field and our trail

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

Tall Bellflower

Marsh Pea

Stickseed

Heal-All (Prunella Vulgaris)

Daisy Fleabane

Wild Parsnip

Sunflower

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.