Day 5: Sunday, August 4, 2013
Location: Eastern Half of Grandfather Falls Segment, Lincoln County, WI
As we reached the end of our Sunday at home, and far too late in the day to be considering it, we decided to jump in our car and drive up to Lincoln County to hike the eastern half of the Grandfather Falls segment, through the Merrill School Forest. The Grandfather Falls segment is cut in two, with the eastern half being a 1.6 mile in-and-out dead end trail. We parked in the Newwood County Park parking lot, and stepped immediately onto the trail. It was already feeling dark in the woods when we started hiking at 6:30 pm, and I figured we needed to hoof it the whole way. It’s no fun hiking in the dark, and we didn’t have flashlights. In hindsight, this was not a bright plan. But – we were motivated, and we hiked fairly quickly down the trail. Once again, this was not the most frequently used segment of the trail, and once again it was less-than-ideal hiking. The blazes through this section were painted in odd places, and sometimes it was hard to locate the next one, though it was nearly impossible to get lost. We hiked until we found it difficult to believe we had to keep hiking east, since it felt like more than 1.6 miles. But there was nothing for it but to keep going. The trail joined with a gravel road for a while, and past an educational building dedicated to Nels Evjue. Then, it leaves the gravel road for another short stint through the ever-thickening woods, finally reaching a sign stating ‘End of Ice Age Trail’, just past a treacherous crossing of a boggy, rocky stream bed. We reversed course, and like most hikers (I imagine) bailed out on the trail, and instead walked down the length of the gravel road and back to the highway the easy way, perhaps taking only a mile or so instead of 1.6 miles. In our case, it was also the safest route, because by now the woods were looking very dark indeed. Put flatly, we lucked out. If we had been hiking through that darkness until 8:30 at night in August it could have put a whole different spin on our day. Another lesson learned the cheap way. Running total: 30.4 miles of trail covered; 6.4 miles ‘extra’ hiking/biking. End of Day 5.
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