We started at Two Medicine lake, walking along the southern shore, slowly making our way towards our ultimate destination: Aster falls. 

We stopped off and visited Paradise Point, which was amazingly beautiful, and took the moment to record a video wishing my sister and niece happy birthdays. 

From there, we continued on towards Aster falls, wandering through a beautiful meadow... I almost tripped and fell about 500 times, stopping frequently to take in the beautiful sights. I always forget how much I miss the mountains.

We made it up to the waterfall and Dahd sat down to rest, while I scrambled up the gully to take some pictures looking back down.

I ended up with quite an amazing view.. you can even see the old man waiting for me down on the bottom left. 

We wandered back to the trailhead afterwards. It was a beautiful afternoon and a great first hike.

Had a beautiful walk on the Ice Age Trail near Medford, WI.

Where is Medford? Well, it's about an hour west of Merril, WI.
Where is Merril? Well, that's about a half hour north of Wausau. 

So basically, we were hiking in the wilderness in the western/central part of the state. Fairly close to the middle stretch between your middle and ring finger if you're using the common way of showing people where you are in Wisconsin. 

We stared hiking at the Mondeaux Dam recreation area, which I would love to visit again sometime. They had a beautiful little restaurant with good food, a nice beach, and a very pretty campground.... and a very nice restaurateur who'd saved a couple of my buddies tails in January by giving them a ride back to their car... which is why we started our hike there.

Immediately upon leaving the beach, we wandered up a set of stairs which was on top of an esker which is a mound of debris left behind by an under-glacier river.

We walked along this esker, overlooking the Mondeaux flowage for about 2 miles. It was stunningly beautiful and well kept trail.

After the first couple miles, the trail turned to the west and dropped down off the esker. Meandering through old growth forest which seemed to change from old aspen, to young pine.

All in all, it was a relatively short hike, but I got to stretch my legs, be outside and have a wonderful few hours wandering the woods.

It was a surprisingly warm Sunday, and I took a friend off to wander up near Holy Hill. One of my favorite hiking spots, a hilly 5 mile loop and a good workout for the legs.

We took every "blue route" and it got us a lot of hills and even a bit of off trail wandering. We got a lot of different angles and glimpses of Holy Hill as we walked up the moraines, going almost 2/3 the way around.

We finished up our hike taking the flatter route back, wandering past a couple streams, and a small lake... the frogs were going crazy up until we got close to them. I'm pretty sure they were serenading us. I didn't get to see any of them, though.

It was a beautiful day, a beautiful hike... and much needed to reset my batteries.

That's the route. Glacier National Park. About 80 miles, 7 days. 

I've wandered Glacier before, but not enough... and this will be a completely different experience for me. I'm thoroughly excited and ready to go full gear nerd and get myself prepared for a week of wandering. 

I wandered about 2.5 miles through Lion's Den gorge, just north of Milwaukee early on a Saturday morning with my friend Mo, and her wonderful companion Manny. 

It was an utterly beautiful March day, and we had an awesome little wander.

Manny got to be Manny for awhile and Mo even had a moment of "Oh my gosh this reminds me of home," which I'm pretty sure is pictured above.

We wandered down the stairway and sat by the lake and had snacks.... while Manny demanded snacks from us.

We ended up walking down a long boardwalk, and looking out over a "waterfowl production area" (yes, that's what the signs said), and finished our day at about 2.5 or 3 miles. Not a long walk, but enough time outside to reset the batteries.