Saturday July 3rd, 2010: Indian Lake County Park

It's the 4th of July weekend, and I let 2 months slip by without getting out for any hiking. Not exactly slipped by, as I had some problems with my foot bothering me (I suspect a stress fracture of one of the bones), a whole lot of maintenance to do around the home, bad weather on weekends, and other events to attend. The foot has felt fine for a month now, sun was shining, and I had my important tasks done for the weekend today, so I looked for a place to hike.

One of my things lately is that I've grown quite weary of the dreadfully bad quality of newer geocache hides over the last 18-24 months. There are some that look interesting, but they are hard to pick out from the volumes of geocaches being placed in locations such as dead-end roads, urban parks, or spaced 1000 feet apart along bike trails so a person can rack up 50 finds in one weekend. I'm going to start revisiting old geocache locations that I remember as being interesting more often and not worry much about new finds. This is a location I have revisited a few times since I first logged a cache here in 2003, during my early years of geocaching.

Indian Lake Park is along Hwy 19 just west of US Hwy 12 by the small hamlet of Marxville, WI. A large sized county park, it's trail system has been integrated into the Ice Age National Scenic Trail since my first visit. There are mutliple trail loops, and you can walk over 7 miles if you take them all. There were 2 geocaches located here for a while, now there is just the original one that's been there since 2001.

I took ol' trail #1 (the long one that goes over the most difficult terrain) beginning in the middle of the afternoon (late start due to indecision of where to go today).

It had been 7 years since I last went to this geocache, but it is about how I remember. One of the few I've seen that is secured to a tree, and it's deep enough into some woods that you cannot see any of this from a trail.

I examined the contents, signed the log (also wrote a note on geocaching.com mentioning my visit, but did not log as a new find). Then I concealed with the deadwood a bit better and continued on the trail.

Some flower blossoms at the edge of the woods.

In the valley between the hills.

To the "warming cabin". Basically an Ice Age Trail rest-stop.

The door was open, so I checked out the insides.

The easy walk back to the parking was just outside of this area.

At this point back at the parking, I was feeling worn, but I decided I had enough energy to make it up the east trail to the chapel overlooking the lake. It is the reason why this land was turned over to be a public park in the first place (been there since the 19th century) but the tiny parcel of land the chapel itself occupies has to be on privately owned land to satisfy atheist organizations who complained. Isn't politics grand?

There is the chapel. It is pretty small inside, and I didn't bother going in this trip.

A flower by the fence surrounding the chapel.

Now the reason I walked up here. I wanted to scout this scenic overlook just a stone's throw from the chapel and determine if I could return here for a sunset photo opportunity.

I believe it will work fine, but not until September. My compass says the view is due west (about 270 degrees). Right now near to the summer solstice the sun is setting about 285 degrees, which is off to the right of this view in the trees. Nearer to the autumnal equinox (1st day of fall) the solar disc should be visible here as it sets on the horizon, and reflect nicely off of the lake. I marked my calendar to return around that time.

Now back down to the parking, is this memorial garden.

My Garmin GPS next to the GPS marker. I was hoping the display would be visible.

One parting shot before returning home.

Now my usual track walked overlaid on a topo map of the park.

But, I discovered how to overlay the tracks into a 3-D representation using Google Earth. I think I may start doing this more and the simple map process less. It shows the hill-climbing I did in a more visible way. This image is captured hovering over Indian Lake itself and viewing east.

I also returned to roots a bit with my pictures. I carried light, just my 24mm prime lens on my Nikon D80 body. I'm using a new strap too, and I can remove the part that goes around the neck (or shoulder) and clip the strap ends to the loops on the shoulder straps of my backpack. It made the camera very easy to carry, didn't swing or bounce about as it did carrying the usual way over the shoulder. Made a lighter and easier to manage package all-around. I intend to do this more in the future too.