Saturday October 2, 2010: Natural Bridge State Park and Hemlock Draw (Leland, Wisconsin)

It was a very cool day, some sun forecast for the morning hours, and the fall colors are starting to show to the north of here. Since I had a seasonal state park pass now, I decided to explore a place I have been wanting to go back to for a couple of years. Natural Bridge State Park near Leland, Wisconsin. I had visited here briefly 2 years ago to log a virtual geocache by taking a photo of the natural arch in the stone. Since then a physical geocache has been placed along the trail system here, and I had been meaning to explore the entire park. It's not a large park by any means. Smaller than many county parks I've been to. There is a lot of hill terrain to make up for the small to moderate length of hiking trail.

First things first - along the way on county PF is this rock formation behind a school building. I wanted a chance to finally photograph it in the lower-angle morning sun. Perhaps a setting sun in the west would be the better choice.

Drove on to the park, and went straight to the main geologic feature for some more photos in the morning sun. Again, late afternoon might work better here.

A panorama stitched-together by software

Then I continued on around the trail loop.

Some old 19th century buildings down by the road. I need to find out the history of these.

Next I crossed the road to an even more rustic trail section. The geocache is on this side, and it looks like very few people venture this way.

I ascended up the bluff to the geocache spot. Almost at the highest point on this trail. The GPS kept pointing at that log as I searched around it.

I found the hiding place about 70 feet away over the edge of  rock outcropping.

This cache has a camera so the people logging in can take a photo of themselves, and eventually wind up on the geocaching gallery for this one. It was also very recently maintained by the owners (HotDogsOffTrail) so it's packed to the top with trade goodies. I didn't take or leave anything today, other than my photo.

Not anywhere near peak fall colors here yet, but still respectable for the first week of October.

You might be able to just make out the trail I was following in this photo. It was like that the entire way.

Back across the road and approaching the parking lot. That's it for this hike.

Google Earth doesn't actually show the natural bridge, but you can get a good idea of the terrain I walked here.

Next geocache is something just placed along the side of a state designated rustic road just driving around to the north. So rustic that it has no pavement.

The only real mystery was which side of the road it was hiding on. Found quickly in a tree.

Now I'm very near one of my favorite places to photograph at this location. Hemlock Draw, a preserve maintained by The Nature Conservancy. The main entrance is a challenging hike that crosses a creek about 3 times with no bridge. I've done it twice, but also had read about a back-entrance from the opposite end on Buckfever Road. Never tired hiking from that way yet. That road intersects with the rustic road I was on. I do believe Buckfever Road is much more rustic than the rustic road. LOL!

This alternate route just follows the remnants of what is left of Buckfever Road for a short while, then just turns into a water flowage going down a fairly steep hill. Was around 250 feet of decending.

I eventually crossed the regular trail that I am familiar with, and followed to the intermittent creek in the draw.

This is one of my most favorite places to photograph. Just love the colors of the cliff face here where the creek flows by. The red-purple Baraboo Quartzite rock also is abundant in the creek bed.

A major false-perspective in this panorama photo I stitched together in software. This is a full 180 degree field of view.

I did hike much further than I had thought I would coming in from this alternate direction. It looked like a shorter and easier route, but possibly is even more difficult because of that long decent downhill that becomes a long ascent uphill when leaving.

This view of my route in Google Earth might put the hill-climbing in perspective.

There was over 3 miles of hiking hills at Natural Bridge park, and over 2 more miles here on difficult terrain. I was pretty tired by the time I returned from this one.

One thing extra I did for this trip that I didn't mention before is that I also carried a film camera with me for photos at the natural bridge and Hemlock Draw. I found a roll of 35mm film in the house earlier this year that had expired 6 years ago. I was just curious to see how it would look if I shot it and had it processed. I bought some new batteries for my old Minolta SLR and shot about half the film roll today. I'll expose the rest soon and get it processed.