Entry for June 7, 2008 - Pine Island near Portage, WI

The weather has been tropical at the end of this week in Wisconsin. The air is humid, that means afternoon rainstorms and the threat of storms each day. I waited until I got up this morning before deciding if I would do a hike, and chose a location as I had my morning coffee. I had been noticing a particular cache near the Wisconsin River by Portage, Wisconsin for a couple of years, but just never got out there. Since weather would be unstable today, I thought this might be one to try because it looked like I could escape quickly. Good plan, because I did need to escape quickly as it turned out.

The geocache is called "Pine Island II" and is a 2-stage puzzle. Not too difficult. The coordinates lead to a rustic road across the river from Portage, in a state wildlife area. A road follows alongside the river levee.

Portage is the seat of Columbia County, and historically was an important location in Wisconsin. It gets it's name honestly, as it is located in the path of a canoe portage that is between the Wisconsin River and the Fox river. That was an important crossing for natives and early explorers and traders alike as this was the short land crossing between the waterways of the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes system. If the Wisconsin and Fox rivers were more navigable, this could have been an even more important point of commerce. A canal was even built here, but it was simply too shallow and hazardous for a decent sized riverboat here. It was still an important trading post until a real road system was built and the river navigation by small boat gave way to pack animal, then railroad.

The directions were to find this sign, and read clues off of it to plug into a published math formula, which yields the digits that are the final geocache's coordinates. All math was done with pen/paper and no calculator. My answer was dead-on accurate.

Nice view here, but it stinks like a typical swamp.

I actually drove my Jeep down some access trails back there to recon the area. The final was actually in the opposite direction on the river-side of the levee.

I drove down the road to find the appropriate parking spot for the final, just to turn around and park in a small lot a few hundred feet from the marker. I walked in the mown path on the other side of the levee, and it was quite a private experience as the cars drove by on the other side.

The water is up, it's been raining a lot lately.

A mile or so walk, and getting close...

Hah! Hiding under some bark.

Found just before noon, but the mosquitoes were pretty bad and I did not linger too long. As I took out a travel-bug (a trackable item that moves between geocaches) and placed a Speed Racer toy, I also took the opportunity to spray on more DEET.

Covered up the ammo box again.

The breeze was much nicer on top of the levee, so I walked there on the way back.

I could see the views across the road from there also...

Can't help but notice those clouds off to the west...

Do you see anything of interest here?

Well, there is the butt-end of a white-tailed deer in the photo.
I first noticed it in full stride as it was bounding up and over the levee to the left, and it bounded across the road where I diagrammed. It was about 2 seconds from my initial sighting to camera brought up to face and photo taken.

Some more sights as I followed a side path.

A lonely hemlock tree among other strange species.

As I arrived back at my parking area, I finally found a short trail that leads to the river.

I could see some very tall clouds building over the western horizon, and decided it was time to leave. 1pm-2pm is optimum time for severe thunderstorms around here, and it was looking like some were brewing. I took an initial scenic route directly toward the storms going home, and was getting appalled at the obvious storms building. A tornado warning was sounded as I drove home (was alerted by the warning sirens as I drove through a small town) but I could tell it was tracking off behind me, and I was driving into a safe direction home. Found out after I got home that the storms did indeed brew tornadoes that were all over the general area I was driving through.

It was about 2.25 miles of walking today. Normally like to go at least 4 miles, but not to be today.