Sunday, November 5, 2023

Cross Plains State Park

 

I did get the photo from the Dairyman's Daughter of us in the Infinity Room at House on the Rock, and in this photo you can see the infinity part of it.


For about a week I'd been thinking about a state park in training that we had gone to in Cross Plains, which wasn't much but did have an amazing view of a couple of hills. I tried to find the blog post about it, thinking I'd posted a photo and maybe I could tell if the bigger hill was Blue Mound, but every term I searched came up with blog posts that had nothing to do with this memory. For example, there was a professional photographer taking pictures of little kids there, but it seemed like a weird time of year, so I thought it was either early spring or late fall, and I thought it happened sometime in 2018. Travalon tried to help me, but he couldn't find anything either. We searched "photographer" and "farm" because it was an old farm someone had donated, we searched "Cross Plains" and "future state park," but none of the blog posts that came up mentioned this particular hike.

This morning we meant to go to our church for Mass, but we were running late and barely made it to the closer church. Once we got home, I tried some more searches and finally just looked through my photos. There was the photo, from October of 2017, and the larger hill was clearly Blue Mound, but I'd never posted the photo because I took it with my cell phone, and it wasn't that good. I said we should go there again, to see if it's been improved in six years, and then Travalon could take a photo of Blue Mound with his good camera. What I should have been aware of (since I vaguely remember reading about this) is that they built a segment of the Ice Age Trail in this state park, and today was the grand opening, so the parking lot was packed. The trail went into the woods and had some bridges and boardwalks. It was far more interesting than the park had been the first time, but we were deep in the woods and couldn't see Blue Mound. We saw a lot of people (and dogs!), even a couple from our church who admitted that they also have been church shopping. Finally we turned around and went to the top of the hill, and from there we got a perfect view of Blue Mound. Oh, and we overshot the parking lot on our way there, so we went to the end of the road and found it overlooked that private pond I'd wanted to have Travalon get some photos of. So here are his photos. First, the private lake owned by a quarry.








Hills behind the lake.


Here are some photos from the Ice Age Trail.






A swimming pool in a tree??





And here are photos from the top of the hill.



Here you can see Blue Mound.






Travalon really zoomed in on Blue Mound in this photo.


Looking the other direction, you could see remnants of autumn colors.







After that vigorous hike, we went to Crossroads Coffeehouse to refuel. At Irish class, it turned out it was our teacher's birthday. (It's also my boss's birthday.) I was having trouble staying awake during class, so Travalon said he would drive me to band practice. Once there, it seemed like we were all cranky - because of the time change? Our leader had us practicing hymns for our upcoming gig, while Hardingfele said why don't we just stick to the music we're good at? We had spent a lot more time arguing about chords than practicing when Travalon came back to pick me up. This ought to be an interesting gig... Fortunately, we still have a couple of weeks to practice for it. And if Hardingfele prevails, and we play waltzes and reels instead of hymns, we'll be in fine shape. I have no idea why our leader decided it should be a Thanksgiving sing-along. Are those even a thing??


Famous Hat

No comments: