Day 129: Devil's Lake Segment (Part 3), Connecting Route, Sauk County
Day 129: Friday, January 21st, 2022
Total Miles covered for the day: 4.9
Location 1: The northern leg of the Devil's Lake Segment, between the northern (western?) trailhead and the parking area on Park Road just where the staircase heads up the west bluff
3.2 miles of trail covered plus 1.2 miles extra hiking
Map 61 has been one of those we have stared at many times.
'When are we going to hike Devil's Lake?' has always been an issue. There are several problems with Devil's Lake. The hills. The humans. The bugs. The rattlesnakes. The hills. The rattlesnakes.
There have been many times we have scheduled a trip there to 'Just do it', only to have that trip redirected, or canceled. And then last year, we managed to get one of those 'Just do it' trips accomplished. On a dreamy weekend in November, with unseasonably warm weather, we came down and hiked the Sauk Point segment, and then the infamous East Bluff, with its imposing rock wall staircase. But then came the snow and ice, and that added one problem too many.
We wanted to hike it in the cold season. We needed to hike it in the cold season, for all the reasons above. Cold weather makes it easier for us to do the hills. It keeps (some of) the humans away. There are no bugs. The rattlesnakes are dormant. (Oh yes, dear child, there are rattlesnakes in the Baraboo bluffs.) But there are precious few days when it's cold in Devil's lake and there is no ice.
And then came the Microspikes.
It seems every post I make about hiking in wintertime makes mention of how indispensable these are as an addition to our winter hiking equipment list. With them, we can walk on ice as safely as on the warm, soft ground, and even more so, since its impossible to slip while we're wearing them. Last weekend we used them to walk up and over the ice-covered rocks and stone staircases at Gibraltar Rock in complete safety, comfort and ease, and suddenly the ice was no longer a factor. Suddenly, the heart of winter was the perfect time to hike at Devil's Lake. This was our weekend for finally getting map 61 behind us.
We drove down last night to stay at a delightful motel in Baraboo called the Willowood Inn. The rooms are small, but the family that owns it tries hard to decorate it nicely and keep it clean. Our room had a nautical theme, centered around lighthouses, and it was a pleasant stay all around, given that we were in the off-season. The rates were decent, too, which was good because in the end I needed to do some of my own shoveling, but that's another story.
When we woke up, it was cold out. Five below zero. That's minus 20 degrees Centigrade if you're metrically inclined. Cold weather is one thing, but that's getting really cold. Fortunately, we also invested in a few of those hand and foot warmers. Also, it was a bright, sunny day, and that would make it feel warmer. Psychologically, anyway.
The Willowood Inn is only a short distance from the Ice Age Trail. Like, literally 1.5 miles from the place in the park where you pay for your park stickers. So it was a pretty short drive getting our vehicles in position for the first leg. Being that it was a new year, both of us needed park stickers on our vehicles, so we both had to drive down to the park office.
This took us a little out of position, because Park Road is one-way. We were in the middle of our intended hiking zone, so we ended up dropping one vehicle off at the parking area right near the headquarters and then driving the full loop and starting our first leg at the parking area on Park Road where the trail starts up the west bluff.
It was still cold. The temperature had clawed its way up to 5 degrees above zero by that point, but a brisk wind that cut through at least five of my seven layers of clothing. It was 11:19 am. We touched the sign, and walked, downhill, the three tenths of a mile to our waiting car. This seems like a ridiculous distance to hike, but the inconvenient one-way road made this actually a logical approach. Also, the bathrooms are open at the headquarters, and you know how it is when you're walking in wintertime - it doesn't take long on that first hike before a restroom is a welcome sight.
After walking down to the parking lot, I hoofed it back up the road to the waiting car. As it turns out, the walk up the road was four tenths of a mile. I should have just gone back up the trail - it would have been faster.
Our second leg was a lot longer. Because the road up to the campgrounds was gated and unplowed, we had no choice but to hike a longer section than we had originally planned, doubling over some ground that we biked last year. We eventually would have come back to walk it anyway, in order to get the thousand-miler patch, but we hadn't planned on doing it today.
So we left one vehicle in place, and drove up to the spot where the trail crosses County Road DL, basically at the top of the hill. This made for a 2.6 mile walk back to the van. Parking was not good at this intersection in wintertime, and we managed to get our vehicle only about a foot off the edge of the road.
There is a bench at the top of the first small incline, but it is listing severely backwards and could use replanting. This was the first of perhaps 10 benches we passed on this leg, which is also great. I have always said the trail could use a few more benches.
About halfway along we hit the T intersection where a little more grooming had taken place. To the south the trail led off to the big parking area on DL, where the vault toilets remain open. We stuck to the trail and kept going.
Absolutely everywhere was the evidence of a healthy population of squirrels and rabbits. Made me wonder where all the foxes, coyotes and hawks were. In addition, I saw plenty of tracks for deer, and even some for turkeys. They were a source of entertainment as we trundled along.
By the time we got into the area north of the Ice Age Campground, we saw signs telling us we were walking on the Johnson Moraine. I'm not sure who this fellow 'Johnson' was. It made me think I'd like to have a land feature named after me someday. It wouldn't have to be a whole moraine. It could just be a pile of boulders. They could put up a sign. Brock's Rocks.
On second thought, scratch that idea. I changed my mind.
Blazes were plentiful until we reached the camp road, then it was hit or miss, with a lot more misses than hits. If I hadn't been sure of the way, we could easily have gone wrong. There was one long walk down the hill on a road with no blazes in either direction for four tenths of a mile, and they were a little spotty for the quarter mile before that stretch and the next two tenths of a mile afterwards. In fact, I highly recommend zooming in to that section on the Hiker Resource map and bringing a screenshot with you as you hike, or you're likely to make wrong turns.
After going under DL through the tunnel bridge, and heading down the road, the trail takes a severe turn to the left, going back up the hill in a way not accurately reflected on the Resource Map.
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| Hiking under County Road DL |
We passed what looked like a chapel in the hills, but may have just been a place to give presentations. We could hear the train whistle screaming below, and a hawk screaming above as we walked.
One more left turn down the road, and we had the parking area in sight. Once past the turnoff where Park Road exits the park, we had connected the two halves of the bifurcation and brought the trail back down to a single line.
The bathrooms at the headquarters are heated, and open through the winter. That is useful knowledge for those hiking in the cold weather. Also, interestingly enough, the last little bit of trail through the woods at the top of the hill was tagged as biking OK, so keep your eyes open for Mountain Bikes while you're there.
Our next leg was to cover the rest of the segment to the east until we reached the Sauk Point Segment. We left our car parked at the DL crossing and parked our launch vehicle at the parking area on State Road 113. After touching the sign to reconnect to the St Croix River, we headed once more into the woods hiking west.
2:52, and the sun already looked this low in the sky.
A sign told (warned?) us that we were entering a piece of trail with four bridges. I don't know what made this sign-worthy. It certainly is nothing new for Ice Age Trail hikers. Maybe it's there for the bicycles. And, true to life, we did in fact encounter four bridges as we made our way along.
There were also one or two benches along the way that we took advantage of. At the last bench, which was a mere tenth of a mile from the car, Theresa noticed that I was edgy, and anxious to get finished. She saw me looking at something off in the woods.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Looks like a wasp's nest."
"Why don't you go take a better look at it?"
I wasn't fooled. I knew she wanted to give me something to do so she could sit for a few more minutes and rest. I didn't mind. I wanted to take a closer look anyway.
They are amazing creatures, the wasps. In fact, the various members of the bee, wasp, yellowjacket and hornet family are quite amazing to me. Most are communal, and even specialized, where an entire colony works together with the common goal of survival. They communicate with each other, and build elaborate structures, sometimes below ground and sometimes above.
This ruined nest, as it turned out, was almost certainly the work of the bald-faced hornet, a black-and-white hornet that's a little on the large side. Like most Hymenoptera the bald-faced hornet is beneficial, feeding on other pest insects like flies and mosquitoes, but they can become quite aggressive if they feel like you're intruding their space.
If you see a large, gray-white-brown nest, about the size of a football or basketball, with a single large opening at the bottom, you're looking at the home of a hive of bald-faced hornets. Best advice - look from a distance. As people, we like the bald-faced hornet. We just like it from a long way off.
This nest looked like it had been destroyed by someone with a stick. It made no difference. The only members of the colony that survive the winter are the pregnant females. They overwinter in stumps, or other protected spots, leaving nests abandoned. All the rest of the colony will die, including the old queens. In the spring, the pregnant females emerge and build new nests, laying a single egg in each chamber. In this way, wasps have been surviving harsh winters for millions of years.
At this point we had walked 4.0 miles of trail, with an extra 0.4 miles of hiking to get back to the car at the beginning. But we had already counted 0.8 of those miles earlier when we were biking through, so bottom line, we could only count this as 3.2 miles of new trail covered, with 1.2 miles of 'Extra', of which .8 miles was now extra biking. It's all very confusing, even to me.
When we got back to the car it was about 3:45. Time for one more short hike.
Location 2: The southern tail of the Devil's Lake Segment between the South Lake Road parking area and the southern (eastern?) trailhead
1.2 miles of trail covered
The second location we picked was the extreme opposite end of the Devil's Lake Segment, between the trailhead and where we left off with the East Bluff on South Lake Road. It was a 1.2 mile hike through the marsh. By 4:20, we were in position.
The walking was easy across restored prairie. We had the trail to ourselves, though it was apparent that many people had been there before us. Even though the sun wouldn't officially 'set' for another forty-five minutes or so, it was already behind the bluffs, so we were walking in deep shadow with the wind in our faces. The temperature had started falling again.
We had been so worried about getting caught out in the dark that we both were hiking quickly, without breaks. We were shocked at our own speed when we reached the other end at 4:55 pm. We had hiked the 1.2 miles in a little over 35 minutes, a pace in excess of two miles an hour. Laugh if you want; for a Snail, that's really moving.
The sun was long out of sight, but there was still enough light left in the sky to see with. It was now 10 degrees, and according to our phones we had reached a high of 14 degrees at some point today.
It was a terrific way to end the day. Tomorrow we had a lot of ground to cover. We headed into town and found Candy's Cafe open. We had a belly-busting fish fry that was as good as I had anywhere, ever.
It should have ended there. It didn't.
Location 3: The connecting route south of the Merrimac Segment between the water's edge and the railroad tracks
0.5 miles of trail covered
So now we were all the way down at the Ferry and we had 1.5 miles of connecting route between us and the south end of the Merrimac Segment. The temperature had dropped down to about 5 degrees, but it seemed like a reasonable distance. We had certainly covered more in the past.
We dropped a car at the Ferry and drove our launch vehicle just north of the railroad bridge to get started. It was 7 pm.
It was full-on dark out, but there was a little ambient light from the nearby street lamps. We had head lamps on, but only used them as needed.
The walk was, at best, bitter cold. Dinner had made us more susceptible to the wind, not less, and by the time we reached the ferry were were done, done, done. And yes, we did walk all the way down to the water's edge before turning back and walking up the road to the waiting car. The extra 200 feet felt like a burden.
The day ended at 7:25 pm, temperature 4 degrees. The rest of the connecting route would have to wait for another day.
Running Total: 880.7 miles of trail covered, 145.7 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 129.
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