Day 24: Monday, February 17th, 2014
Location: Central
portion of Janesville Segment, Rock County, WI
The Northernmost part of the Ice Age Trail is located in
Polk County, in an isolated and heavily forested tract of land owned by the Ice
Age Trail Alliance. It lies very near an
unnamed stub of a creek just west of 50th Street, and somewhere north
of 325th Avenue, on Map 5f for those following along in their Atlas. We have not been there yet, but I’m fairly
sure the place is unmarked. There is no
particular significance to the spot, except that it is where the Latitude
number on one’s global positioning system will peak out at N
45° 40' 38.8603". I
look forward to the day we return north and cross this particular spot, if only
because it is one of the few points of any significance that can be found while
trekking through mile after mile of dauntingly similar terrain. At its terrestrial opposite on the trail is
the southernmost point, located in fairly urban Janesville, WI, where the
Latitude needle dips all the way down to N 42° 40' 3.2682". This means that the trail, if traveled from
its northernmost point to its southernmost point in a straight line along the
outer curve of the globe, would cover just over three degrees of latitude, or
roughly 207 miles, ignoring the west-to-east portion of that trip. Just unimportant facts. You can’t go in a straight line, so the
number is unimportant, but truly, your mind starts to think about very unusual
things as you walk for hours with only your own thoughts to listen to.
Take a look at the City of Janesville, WI on a map, and it
is easy to see the Rock River slicing through from the northwest and taking a
severe westward turn at Jeffris Park, where Black Hawk Creek empties gently
from the east. The Ice Age Trail skirts
around the southern end of Jeffris Park, and where it crosses S. Main Street,
or a little to the East, is the magical place where the trail hiker ceases all
southward progress and heads north again.
I can say with absolute certainty that while my heart took an extra beat
as we passed this spot, the trail-makers had no evident urge to commemorate the
singularity.
Today we returned to the trail, in our single vehicle, with
no particular goal except to pick up where we left off and cover the next
section of trail to the west and north.
Eventually, we decided to park in the middle of where we thought we
might want to walk, covering a down-and-back loop, followed by and up-and-back
loop if we felt like it. Our resolve was
called into question because mother nature had called up a truly vicious
snowstorm for us which started bad and got worse. We parked behind a building at the end of
Riverside Street where the trail was in sight, at a point just north of where
it crosses the Rock River on an old rail bridge. The river remained stubbornly unfrozen,
despite all the extreme cold temperatures we have been receiving (even Lake
Superior is nearly 100% frozen over this year), and flighty flocks of
Bufflehead ducks dotted the water for hundreds of feet in both directions along
the river. Despite the snow, and the
wind, and the cold, we soon discovered that we were not the only ones leaving
tracks along the trail. Truly this was a
well-used pathway. As we leveled out
along the south edge of Jeffris park we were in a fairly wooded area, and we
crossed a single creek where there was a bench overlooking the waterway. Even this tiny, little creek was unfrozen,
owing mostly to the fact that it was fed entirely by springs which remain
active even in the deepest cold of winter.
A short while farther we crossed Beloit Ave., and then Main Street, and
there we were – the southernmost point of the trail. No one was there to see it happen. We kissed, and kept walking.
We were actually only about 2000 feet from where we had
stopped the night before, at Sharon Dr.
We reached that point, touched the roadsign, and turned around.
Back at the car, Theresa shed one layer of clothes, and we
decided we would continue hiking despite the worsening snowstorm. Fifty feet to the north, the trail went truly
urban, walking along city streets and sidewalks, generally headed northwest
along the Rock River. At times it was difficult
to tell if we were really on the trail, but there was enough signage and yellow
blazes to keep us on line, and we trudged along downwind (the storm was coming
primarily and oddly from the southeast) until we got all the way to the
railroad bridge just past W Centerway Street.
There, we turned around, faced into the wind, and immediately called
into question our decision to keep hiking.
It wasn’t so bad walking with
the wind, but the return trip proved more of a challenge. We stopped, for the second time, at a
convenient bowling alley on the route for a trip to the restrooms, where they
no doubt wondered what these two people were doing walking through a
snowstorm. We also crossed paths with
someone in a small cart which was supposed to be plowing the path and keeping
it clear for walkers, but in all honesty the area they had ‘cleared’ was harder
to walk on than the area that wasn’t clear, because there was so much snow it
fell in uncontrolled lumps right back onto the path behind the cart, and the
lumpy, uneven surface was really challenging.
