Saturday October 16th, 2010: New Glarus Wood State Park and Liberty Pole Hill

It's another weekend of fair weather this October. For a couple of years I've wanted to try hiking in the New Glarus Woods State Park. Located along Wisconsin highway 69 just south of New Glarus. You can actually walk along a trail from the village all the way into the park. I have a state park pass, so I just drove to the park entrance proper on county NN. I brought a lot of photo gear with me planning to capture the fall colors as I hiked.

Now at least a couple of months ago, there were 5 geocaches located here. I checked the evening before my trip, and there is now only one shown on the geocaching.com site. That disappointed me a little, but I continued with my plans and added one other stop to the itinerary just in case.

I wanted to arrive just at dawn, but my plans did not work as well as I thought. I did have some nice morning light for a while though. The park entrance was not staffed when I arrived, so I didn't get to pick up a trail map before starting. Kind of regretted that a bit as I walked around.

I just walked along a paved trail to the north and wandered into a prairie restoration trail at the far northern end. There are a few surprises on this guided trail.

I checked, the bison is made of plastic.

Now the weather report I watched the night before said this area southwest of Madison was at 75% - 100% of peak colors, but really this place is well past 100%. Looks like I am about 1 week late.

So I found a map displayed on a information board, but I had to work from memory as I walked my way south in the direction of my one geocache to find here.

Now trying to work from memory on which turns to make to get on the right trail for the geocache, I did lose my way a bit.

I reached the county highway that crosses the park at the incorrect point to cross over and find the trail on the south side. Not a huge problem, I just had to walk along the side of the road until I found it.

There is a short, special gun-deer hunt this week. There was a warning sign posted at the trail on the south stating that hunting is allowed here to the south of the road, and advised all non-hunters to wear blaze-orange for safety. I knew about the hunting today, had been hearing distant gunshots as I walked, and came prepared. I donned a blaze-orange vest I purchased a few years ago for just such an occasion.

This particular geocache was placed 7 years ago as a handicapped-accessible cache. This particular area has an accessible parking spot and a blind that somebody in a wheelchair (well one of those off-road types anyhow) can use and observe the turkey herds here. It was pretty easy to find, but I think somebody requiring a wheelchair might also require a helper to retrieve from this spot due to the amount of brush around it.

I signed the log, placed a wooden-peg puzzle inside, and decided to see where the rest of the trail takes me.

This turned into a 4.25 mile walk through the hills and valleys here.

That was not the end of the morning's geocaching however. Along Wisconsin highway 92 going east was another park with a geocache I've been trying to find a time to visit. It's kind of the "cache-n-dash" type that I don't like to do most of the time, but after walking over 4 miles earlier for a single find, this was a good time to try it.

The place is called Liberty Pole Hill. There is a sleepy little park located here which is actually the geographic high-point of Grant county, WI. There is some history here for which the name of the hill is taken. During the Civil War, there was a cabin and a flag pole located at this point, and volunteers for the Union Army from this part of the state would come to this spot (easy to see for miles around) to enlist and form into regiments, then march on to a rail station to go to war.

Something new this year, a flag pole once again flies a flag at this spot. Reading the history, there had not been a flag pole here for 40 years prior.

This geocache is cleverly disguised as a square-shaped rock. LOL It did blend in a bit with the rock it was hiding under.

I signed the log book and took some more photos.

As you might expect since this is the high-point of the county, you can see pretty far.

I had brought a backpack full of photo gear today. I really didn't need to in retrospect as I only used one lens the entire day on my Nikon D80 (my 35mm prime lens). I also had my old Minolta film SLR and continued to use up that roll of film I started shooting 2 weeks ago. Still have 4 frames left to shoot on it before I get it processed.