Wandering the Ice Age Trail near Palmyra

Golden leaves and blue sky

Spent Sunday morning/early afternoon wandering the ~7 mile segment from the Emma Carlin trailhead to Bald Bluff with my buddy Rick.

It couldn't have been a more perfect day to hike, upper 50's and a crisp, beautiful blue sky, and I was hiking a completely new segment of the Ice Age Trail for me.

While most of the trees were still mostly green, the Ash (I think) were a stunning golden.

---

A Green Pond

We kept walking, up hills, down valleys, spotting a neat little pond, completely green with algae.

It was such a bright day, even being beneath the trees, everything was bright. It was a difficult thing to capture in pictures, but it was almost as though the woods were dancing with the sunshine.

---

Walking the Ridge

Every time the breeze blew, the shadows seemed to disappear and the sun peeked through even farther. It was clear to me, I needed this day to wander... and even though my calf started bugging me midway through the hike, it felt so good to be outside.

We came upon a knife-like ridge as we wandered up, a really cool feature you don't see much in Wisconsin, and the trail wandered along it for a couple hundred yards. Looked like a lot of trail work had been done there, and it was a really cool little stretch of trail.

Of course, right after this stretch, there was another amazing golden Ash tree, and I couldn't help but snap a few pictures of it.

---

Stone Elephant

As we passed the halfway point, and the horse campground, we came upon the world famous Stone Elephant -- although I have no idea how it got that name, and I doubt it's world famous.

After searching a bit online, hoping to figure out the origin of the name (no luck on that, but it apparently used to be an important spot for the Potowotomi Indians), I will say it's amazing how different the spot looked than even 5 years ago, the amount of undergrowth is crazy.

---

We continued walking enjoying the scenery, and finally slowly began to climb up a long stretch of trail. Suddenly popping out from the woods and finding ourselves on Bald Bluff, with a very pretty view to the Southwest.

Hey, that's me!