Until I get around to writing about this summer’s visit to Minnesota, here’s a compare and contrast of High Falls in Grand Portage, Minnesota, from one summer to the next — quite a difference in the volume of water.
July 2013:
August 2014:
And in miniature for fun:
Now the trip really was winding down under more gray skies with occasional rain. After taking some photos of the low but wild-looking Baptism River, we left Baptism River Inn and took a brief detour to Palisade Head, hoping for a slightly better view. Lemon Wolf Café isn’t open on Mondays, so we settled for Northern Lights Roadhouse and Pub, where we were seated on an enclosed porch overlooking the lake and the downpour for a relaxed, homely lunch.
Because of the rain, we thought about skipping Gooseberry Falls State Park, but I knew I’d have have regrets if we drove on by. We, along with many others, waited under the shelter of the visitor center porch as the rain came down, watching drenched visitor after drenched visitor return on the trail.
After a time the rain slowed and stopped, so we took off as fast as we could toward the falls. With the overcast sky, the lighting was poor and the colors washed out, but I continued to work on improving my waterfall photography techniques. We had been there for a while — maybe a half hour? — when we sensed the weather shifting again, so hightailed it back to the visitor center just as the clouds opened up again.
South of Gooseberry Falls State Park we came to the Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel, which was bored through the volcanic rock between 1991 and 1994. We stopped at the wayside to walk along the trail between the tunnel and the lakefront, but after a few feet the rain, which had slowed somewhat, picked up again, and I hurried back to the shelter of the car while J. opted to hang in and get drenched.
Further south, we passed through Two Harbors in search of a coffee shop, but if I remember right the one wanted to go to was closed. Further along we stopped at SuperOne to pick up containers for all our leftovers. At this point, it truly felt like the wilder parts of the Gunflint Trail and North Shore were well behind us — we were back in town.
Too, too soon we were in the city, Duluth, passing what appeared to be ritzy historic mansions, one of them a museum. We said goodbye to Highway 61, which merges into I-35 at 26th Avenue East. It was like a farewell to a beloved friend you may never see again.
It had become sunnier, and Duluth in full daylight is not nearly as eerie as it had been the first time I passed through in July 2013, at twilight on a misty night that made the city and hills appear as ephemeral as Brigadoon.
We pushed on to Superior, Wisconsin, and Red Mug Espresso, a half-underground coffee shop steeped in colorful art for sale and housed in a historic building. Their website cites one of Mike Royko’s favorite ideas:
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg talked about the importance of the “third place” — a community anchor, separate from home and work, where people feel welcome, socialize, and meet friends new and old.
(For Royko, his third place was a bar.)
“It’s a place to live your life,” the site adds. I would if only it were closer. As with so many places I’ve found on journeys both short and long, it was hard to leave this experience behind, but we still had plans for the remaining daylight.
One of these plans, a visit to Superior Entry Lighthouse, was thwarted by a combination of diminishing daylight time and the bumpy nature of Moccasin Mike Road, which isn’t that long. We couldn’t guess at what Wisconsin Point Road would be like on the narrow strip leading to the light, so we agreed to turn back on Moccasin Mike (I just wanted to say that name again) and head for our next out-of-the-way stop, Pattison State Park.
After driving down what seemed like endless country roads, we arrived at Pattison State Park, which is home to Wisconsin’s highest waterfall, Big Manitou Falls. You’d think it’d be easy to find a 165-foot-high waterfall, but it was surprisingly difficult — maybe because we were tired and easily confused by the directions some people we ran into gave us. The first spot we found seemed to be above the falls and didn’t offer a view. J. went one way while I went another. My way led to a platform on a cliff side overlooking the falls. To my left below, the falls roared. To my right, the sun was headed toward the horizon in a show of bright clouds and dark hills. The view on both sides helped make up for missing Superior Entry. Alas, we missed Little Manitou Falls, which are a few miles upstream.
With the sun setting, it was time to move on and get as far south in Wisconsin as we could. We made it — with effort — to Chippewa Falls, where we stopped at a chain hotel with no rooms. The very helpful desk attendant called two other chains — also no vacancies. She told me that’s not unusual for Chippewa Falls, which is a hotbed of business. The last place she called is, like the Bates Motel, somewhat off the major road. For that reason perhaps, they had available rooms. Avalon Hotel and Conference Center is a hybrid hotel-motel; many rooms have both inside rooms like a hotel and outside doors like a motel. Nervous guests can get a room with an inside door only. After a long day and the experience of last year, all that mattered to me was being able to crawl into a comfortable bed before the wee hours arrived and getting rested for the long day ahead.
After breakfast courtesy of our hostess, we crossed the scary, narrow bridge toward the outside world and headed north to Cascade River State Park. On the way, we detoured at Lutsen, where Moondance Coffee House called. How can anyone go to a chain coffee shop when there are gems like Moondance in this world? (Okay, it’s a bit far for the average person.)
The cascades of the Cascade River are an easy, relatively short walk from the parking area (short if you don’t photograph every scrap of the fungus along the way). There are three cascades we could see. I watched some hardier people go up a trail that runs along the river, and we followed them partway. As with everywhere else in northern Minnesota, I’m sure we scratched only the surface of Cascade River State Park. This visit was a little bittersweet because this was the last time we’d visit one of the more northern parks on Highway 61.
By the time we arrived at the impressive Tettegouche State Park visitor center, the weather had turned cloudy and threatening. After spending some time shopping and relaxing at the visitor center, we decided to try to make it to Shovel Point, which is one of those “must see” places. By now, however, I was miserably fatigued and couldn’t get very far, the sky was dreary and uninteresting, and it was spitting enough rain every now and then to be a little uncomfortable without rain gear handy, so I didn’t get far and J. didn’t get much farther. We did get some okay photos, and we drove to Palisade Head for a panoramic if gray view of Lake Superior. I remembered Palisade Head from last year, to my surprise, because of the steep, twisty, narrow, partly one-lane drive up. It felt like returning to an old friend.
Our final stop before returning to Baptism River Inn was another old friend, Lemon Wolf Café in Beaver Bay. It seemed less crowded than last year, but the soup with wild rice was delicious, and so was everything else we ate — once again undoubtedly undoing any health benefits we would have gained from the day’s walking.
The sky was opaque with clouds, so now we were fairly certain we’d see no aurora borealis on this trip. I’d stand out in a downpour for that . . .
After some confusion about the length of stay at Shoreline Inn (J. thought it was two days), we relaxed on a deck overlooking the beach until the sun became too much, then set out for the next destination, with a brief detour to the Grand Marais Pharmacy — a traditional pharmacy housed in a log-style building.
Our destination was Judge C. R. Magney State Park, which we had missed last year and which I later discovered is home to a not-to-be-missed attraction — Devil’s Kettle. More than an attractive waterfall, Devil’s Kettle is where half of the Brule River, split by a rock formation, flows merrily on its obvious course to Lake Superior. On the other side of the rock, half of the Brule pours into the “kettle,” where it disappears forever, at least in the imagination. No one knows for sure where it reconnects with the Brule, if it does, or if it flows underground somehow to Superior. According to geologist John C. Green:
One [theory] is that, after dropping down the pothole, the river runs along a fault underground, or as a variant, that it enters an underground channel and comes out somewhere under Lake Superior. Both of these ideas have one valid aspect in common: they recognize that water must move downhill.
But the main problem is creating a channel or conduit large enough to conduct the impressive flow of half the Brule River! Faulting commonly has the effect of crushing and fracturing the rock along the fault plane. This could certainly increase the permeability of the rock — its capacity to transmit water — but the connected open spaces needed to drain half the river would be essentially impossible, especially for such a distance.
Furthermore, there is no geologic evidence for such a fault at the Devil’s Kettle. Large, continuous openings generally do not occur in rocks, except for caves in limestoneterranes. The nearest limestone is probably in southeastern Minnesota, so that doesn’t help… Maybe the Devil’s Kettle bottoms out fortuitously in a great lava tube that conducts the water to the Lake… Unfortunately for this idea, they are not the right kind of volcanic rocks.
Rhyolites, such as the great flow at this locality, never form lava tubes, which only develop in fluid basaltic lava. Even the basalts in this area may not be the “right kind”, being flood basalts that spread laterally as a sheet from fissures, not down the slopes of a volcano. No lava tubes have been found in the hundreds of basalt flows exposed along the North Shore.
Furthermore, the nearest basalt is so far below the river bed, and even if it did contain an empty lava tube (very unlikely after its long history of deep burial) the tube would have to be both oriented in the right direction (south) and blocked above this site so that it isn’t already full of debris. And there are no reports of trees or other floating debris suddenly appearing at one spot offshore in Lake Superior. The mystery persists.
How could I miss such an opportunity? This was a longer walk, my energy levels were subsiding, but we had read that there were a few strategically placed benches along the way. And I was highly motivated to push myself. We found the parking area and the signs and launched ourselves down the trail, crossing the Brule. J. quickly became sidetracked by the multitude of mushrooms in the park, so I went ahead. This is a well-marked, well-traveled path, but Judge C. R. Magney is largely untamed, and most of it is inaccessible. As this was the day’s only planned activity, I felt less pressured to hurry. Along the way, I came upon an overlook with a bench and a view of some waterfalls. Also on the way we stopped at a place where you can walk out on to the rocks by the river — a wild spot.
Later J. caught up with me, and we found there are a lot of stairs down (which means a lot of stairs up on the return). Further along, after we’d gotten separated again, I came to another set of steps and fell up the first high one, which made me even weaker with laughing in front of a couple who was sitting there. Half was the humor of how silly I must have looked; the other half was relief I didn’t crack my kneecap.
I wasn’t sure I was going to make it but I did reach Devil’s Kettle — keeping the promise to myself to see it was well worth discomfort on the way. We spent some time at one overlook, then moved on to a slightly lower one, all the while taking photos. Like the other waterfalls we’d seen this year, Devil’s Kettle was running lighter than it sometimes does — I’ve found a video in which a torrent surges over the rhyolite rock obstruction, almost obscuring the split in the Brule. Wherever the kettle half of the water goes, it must be able to accommodate a prodigious volume.
On the way out of the park we disturbed a groundhog, who ran to a drain for cover — and found himself trapped. I took photos and videos as he looked around, trying to figure a way out, but we soon left him in peace.
We stopped at the spot where the Kadunce River flows into Lake Superior, which again was calm. It’s fascinating to think about all that water winding its way for several miles through the woods, only to disperse itself into the breadth and depth of an inland sea, from where it will touch who-knows-how-many people. I looked upstream, which looks like it would be a beautiful walk. I’ve read since that from this spot you can walk over six Kadunce waterfalls in about a mile or so when the water is running low. I wish I had known that sooner — I might have planned a morning or afternoon around it.
Our next stop was at the Dairy Queen in Grand Marais, where we undid any health benefits we’d gotten from walking over the slightly uneven terrain and the steps down and up at Judge C. R. Magney State Park.
We headed south on 61 with few specific plans for the next couple of days and with a sense that our vacation was quickly coming to an end. We found the area we were looking for easily enough, but pulled up at a house that didn’t look like our destination. No doubt used to bewildered tourists, a woman came out and told us how to get to Baptism River Inn — we’d missed the turnoff in the dark, which isn’t surprising. It’s reached over a low, narrow bridge with minimalist if any guardrails. We arrived a little before 10 p.m., to find that hosts and guests were tucked in for the night — good idea.
After breakfast I watched a couple pack a canoe and marveled at how much they managed to get into it. Clearly they were going a lot farther than the palisades. Finally they set out, with the female person in the back, although they didn’t get far. They must have decided to head back and switch places, but before they did that, the canoe started to spin. And spin. And spin. Just like an amusement park ride. Kevlar must be great for portages and for nausea. I wondered how experienced they were.
Reluctantly we left Clearwater Historic Lodge with the idea of seeing a wildflower sanctuary J. had found on a list of attractions. Naturally, we had difficulty finding it, and were almost in Grand Marais before discovering we needed to backtrack, not to mention find facilities. A few miles off the Gunflint Trail, we discovered Devil Track General Store, with essentials scattered on half-bare shelves. I felt like I had stepped many years and many miles back in time, to a place like Mayberry after the interstate had bypassed it and it had been forgotten by the strange inhabitants of the stranger steel and glass towers that have creeped over more of the landscape of the modern world. Cue the Twilight Zone music.
We did find the Devil Track Wildflower Sanctuary, which is along the relatively short Devil Track River. The trail is grown over and close, and for some reason I opted not to go very far down it. Instead, I spent a good hour or so photographing flowers around the gravel parking area, where they grew abundantly. During this trip, I think I spent as much time photographing flowers as I did waterfalls, rivers, and lakes.
Next we set out for Grand Marais, where the marvelous Java Moose café awaited with good coffee, ice cream, WiFi, and a lovely view of Lake Superior. This is yet another place where I could have stayed forever, people and shore watching. Alas, after an hour or so, it was time to move on to our luncheon destination — Naniboujou Lodge and Restaurant, built in the 1920s as a club with a giant rock fireplace. There had been no room at the inn, so the plan was to have lunch there. At this time of day the dining room was sparsely populated, although a group did appear. Afterward, while J. perused the gift shop, I went behind the lodge and took photos of a particularly serene Lake Superior.
There had been room at Grand Portage Lodge and Casino, so that was our next destination. Last year, we’d driven there late at night in driving, blinding rain. Now it was a sunny late afternoon, perfect weather for a relaxing drive along a road that had seemed more terrifying a year earlier in the darkness and rain.
After checking in, we went to Grand Portage State Park, home to Minnesota’s highest waterfall (imaginatively named High Falls). The park belongs to the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and they lease it back for a nominal fee so all of us can enjoy this marvel. Last year High Falls had been such a torrent that even on the steps to the platform we were soaked by the spray and deafened by the roar. In comparison this evening’s High Falls was a mere trickle, with no spray and more of the underlying rock exposed. I noticed the lack of spray, but didn’t think much of it until I compared my 2013 and 2014 photos. Then I realized Cross River had also been running much more lightly this year than last, when it had been almost terrifyingly high as it rushed toward Highway 61.
After a couple of stops to admire Lake Superior, we returned to the Lodge and finally made it into the pool that we’d missed out on last year. Ahhh. Tomorrow was going to be an early morning.
Our first stop in the morning was at Chocolate Moose (one of the few moose we spotted during the trip) for breakfast en plein air. Next, we were lured in by their neighbor, Piragis Outfitters, where we found cool stuff like bags and sporks. Who wouldn’t love a good Swedish-designed spork? I’m almost as dangerous at an outfitters as I am at a bookstore or office supply shop. If I camped or canoed or kayaked, I’d be destitute.
The next stop in Ely was the North American Bear Center, where we arrived in time to see the enrichment program at work and some of the relationships between the bears in play. I supplemented my Vince Shute photos with some of the center’s youngest bear treed by its largest, and of the largest bear snarling. She didn’t seem to be in a good mood on this beautiful August morning.
Toward the end of our visit, we ran into a woman who encouraged us to drive around Shagwa Lake, which is one of the many places I’d hang out at if I lived in Ely. Judging from the family we saw on its shores, it’s as good for wading and fishing as it is for photography.
J. stopped briefly at the Dorothy Molter Museum, a tribute to the “Root Beer Lady.” She’s said to be the last non-indigenous resident of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). Her homestead was dismantled in 1987, with two cabins restored in Ely. She made root beer and sold it to canoeists. I confess that at the time I didn’t find this as interesting as J. did, so I stayed in the car. I’m still haunted by all the stops made during last year’s trip, the long drives between destinations, and the resulting 1 or 2 a.m. arrivals. I have to get over that.
At the International Wolf Center, a lone wolf posed for photos, although I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo of him while he was moving.
Both the bear and the wolf centers offer a great experience, with lots of information for the interested adult and activities for children. While resting my feet at the Bear Center, I watched videos of Alaskan brown bears catching salmon and strutting off with their victims. I also posed with a late member of the elusive moose species and compared my size to the that of several North American bear species (at best, I’m the height of a juvenile or female black bear). At the Wolf Center, we walked through an exhibit of aurora borealis photos — the northern lights that in nearly three weeks of travel in 2013 and 2014 we were destined not to see even once.
After all this activity, we went to a café I’d found on Yelp!, the Front Porch, which is as comfortable as a café can get. It’s in a house with a lot of porch space in addition to roomy interiors. The food and coffee were good, and so was the cheesecake we bought for later. The Front Porch ranks high on my list of places I didn’t want to leave and that I wish were nearby. That’s even without having seen the live music offerings they have on some evenings.
After tearing ourselves away from the Front Porch, we began our hunt for the Ely pillow rock, which I’d spotted on a whimsical tourist map of Ely I’d picked up at Fortune Bay. From waymarking.com:
This historic 15’ rock outcrop is a wonderful example of Ely greenstone, a “rare ellipsoidal lava flow formed beneath primeval seas 2.7 billion years ago.” It is volcanic in origin and there are very few specimens like this in the world. It is easily accessible 24/7 and can be seen on the north side of Main Street in the northeast part of town.
Ellipsoidal lava is also known as “pillow laval” and is any lava characterized by pillow structure and presumed to have formed in a subaqueous environment.
When you have a chance to see a 2.7 billion-year-old lava rock in the Midwest, you can’t miss it. We almost did, however, because it was hard to find. A pair of cyclists tried to help, but I’m not sure they agreed on where to send us. After we drove around a while and ended up downtown again, one of my map apps finally gave me a clearer picture of where it should be on Main Street, which, despite its name, proved to be a gravel road.
When we finally got to what looked like the right spot, we didn’t see it at first because it was down the road a bit. This ancient piece of lava, formed when the area was underwater, is on the edge of a wooded area across from some typical houses. Most likely the residents who see it every day are over its charms, but I would find it amazing to pass such a relic of the past every day. I would feel more connected to the world that was than to the world that is.
During all this driving through Ely, we’d seen a custard place, Red Cabin Custard. It was a warm enough day for it, and stopping there gave J. a chance to get a Dorothy Molter root beer, while I had a PMS sundae (I recommend it whether you need it or not).
After packing up and checking out of Silver Rapids Lodge prematurely, we stopped at Kawishiwi Falls, which is a relatively easy short walk. The falls seem to be downstream from a dam, but that didn’t detract from their beauty in the early evening.
Leaving Ely behind, we set out at last on Highway 1, which was a long, lonely drive that seems to be used primarily by mining and logging vehicles. We saw very few cars, a few trucks, and no moose, although there may have been a white-tail or two. Even the towns seemed tiny and remote.
At least we reached Highway 61, the scenic road that runs along the western shore of Lake Superior. To our surprise, Highway 61 was under construction. Whether it was northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, the Sauk City area, or now Highway 61, we couldn’t get away from construction. In this case, long stretches were gravel only, and some parts were down to one lane with long red lights to control traffic. Gone is my original memory of 61 as a misty, lightly traveled wonder (which it still is, in parts).
After bumping along for miles of torn-up, gravelly road, we arrived at the Americinn in Tofte, perhaps another sign of a growing tourist trade along the North Shore, to get ready for the next day.
The sequel to last summer’s Lake Superior trip began July 31, when J. helped me take Petunia to the Hyde Park Animal Hospital, followed by a quick dinner at Plein Air Café. Finally, we stowed all my stuff in the car and set out, with the goal of reaching Cedarberry Inn in Sauk City.
This isn’t as easy as you’d think. This summer, as last, the Jane Addams Expressway is under construction, which meant for J. driving at night at reduced speed through dozens of miles of construction barrels and barriers. Although I wasn’t driving, I could sense how stressful it was, with no end in sight. I don’t know how people commute through this nightmare every day. Of course, we’d be taking the same route back — something to look forward to! After reaching Wisconsin, we ran into pockets of construction. Even after leaving I90/94 for Sauk City, we faced construction. At least when we got to Minnesota, off the interstates, we thought, we’d face no more construction mazes.
Finally, we arrived at Cedarberry, where the next morning you bet I immersed myself in the warm jets of the whirlpool. So far I had not felt the sharp pangs caused by sitting confined in a car for long periods.
The reason for driving out of the way to Sauk City was to visit Blue Spoon Café in Prairie du Sac. Started by the Culver family of “Butter Burger” fame, Blue Spoon is nestled between one of Prairie du Sac’s main streets and the Wisconsin River. Sitting on the patio overlooking disused, abruptly ending train tracks and the river, I felt relaxed and peaceful in a way I’m not sure that I ever have. Only the need to press on and get to Tower, Minnesota, at a reasonable hour weighed on me.
J. noted some state parks along the way that he thought would make great stops, but I’m doomed to be the nay-saying killjoy. When we spotted a series of stone stacks along I90/94, however, I agreed this was worth investigating, however briefly. This proved to be Mill Bluff State Park, and the bluffs are what you might call sea stacks, formed underwater. Mill Bluff State Park is part of the Ice Age National Scientific Reserve in the Driftless Area.
Even though this park is in the driftless area, the area the glaciers missed, the geologic features are partially the result of the last (or Wisconsin) stage of glaciation. During this glacial advance, the Wisconsin River was plugged near Wisconsin Dells. The river spread out to form glacial Lake Wisconsin, covering most of what today are Adams, Juneau and other adjacent counties, including the Mill Bluff area. During this time, some of the mesa and buttes stood as islands in the glacial lake, while others were submerged. Wave action hastened erosion of the sides of the rock forms.
The unique flat-topped, cliff-sided rock structures are capped by layers of somewhat more resistant sandstone; and weathering tends to break the rock off in vertical fragments. There are remnants of the Dresbach Group, Upper Cambrian sandstone. The heights of the bluffs range from 80 feet to over 200 feet. The mesa and buttes are isolated “outliers” of the continuous limestone-capped escarpments south of the park.
We drove around a bit, talked to an elderly staffer, drove some more, then found the trail that lead to the top of Mill Bluff, up about 223 steps crafted by the CCC during the 1930s. We have a lot to thank the CCC for, 70-plus years later.
I wish I’d known more about the geology of the area as I stood on top of Mill Bluff, but even to the ignorant like me, the view is spectacular. It takes a little imagination to see the park without I90/94 dividing it.
After Mill Bluff State Park, we did have one scheduled stop — Amnicon Falls State Park, not far from Duluth. After a brief detour down a residential gravel road, we found the park we’d been to before at about the same time of day but two weeks later in the summer, with earlier nightfall. A staffer told J. about a photo contest and to look for Snake Pit Falls near the park’s namesake falls.
Amnicon Falls is indeed a photogenic spot, complete with rustic footbridge. The view of Snake Pit Falls in the growing gloom was a delightful bonus, although I’m resigned to never seeing this park in sunlight or even daylight.
The original plan had been to stop at K&B Café and BBQ in Eveleth, Minnesota, at the recommendation of J.’s co-worker. By the time we hit Eveleth, however, it was past closing time. We did stop at a rest area, where we learned about the Laurentian Divide. How did teachers make earth science sound so dull?
At last, perhaps around 11:30 p.m. or so, we arrived at Fortune Bay, a huge resort and casino complex on Lake Vermilion owned by the Bois Forte Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa. A little worse off for the 223 steps at Mill Bluff State Park, I welcomed the comparatively early night.
Although I don’t always appreciate the forced sociability that comes with staying at a bed and breakfast, I do like getting an earlier start without having to go out in search of food. We had another opportunity to admire the view from the River Rose Inn in Elizabethtown and the old magnolia for which the Magnolia Cottage is named, although the male proprietor called it the “garbage tree” because of all the leaves it had dropped.
We drove through Golconda, which has a scenic overlook on the shores of the Ohio, an old-style pharmacy focused on health care, a grocery, an ice cream joint, and a couple of historic buildings that we would drive past later, including Riverview Mansion Hotel.
Burden Falls and Bell Smith Springs are on the list of things you should see in Shawnee. Even with the rain, I knew that Burden Falls wasn’t likely to be running, but it sounded scenic. Like Whoopie Cat and Tacumseh Lakes, it’s several miles down country roads — so far down that you wonder if you missed it.
We did find it eventually. While the waterfall was dry, several baby waterfalls trickled over the rocks near the parking lot. It is a beautiful area, with a few but not many people around. We went only as far as the falls, a short distance, although the trail continues. As with many spots in Shawnee, you can escape from the ubiquitous sound of car and truck traffic that permeates our lives.
There was more there we could have explored, but this kind of trip is like a tasting — you can try a little of many things without savoring one for more than a few moments.
Our next stop, Bell Smith Springs Recreation Area, is “always changing,” according to the graphic at the parking lot. I’m not savvy about topography, so I figured we’d follow the trail and see what there is to see. We spent a couple of hours here and saw only a fraction of the area. According to the U.S. Forest Service:
Bell Smith Springs is one of the most beautiful recreation areas the Shawnee National Forest has to offer. It contains a series of clear, rocky streams and scenic canyons bordered by high sandstone cliffs and an abundance of vegetation unique to Illinois. The trail system consists of eight miles of interconnected trails featuring strange and wonderful rock formations, such as Devil’s Backbone, Boulder Falls and a natural rock bridge. Hiking this system of trails is a favorite activity because of the rock features, scenic overlooks, hidden springs and lush flora and fauna.
From the little we saw, it is all that. The trail features steps carved into the rock by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. They’re so well crafted that they don’t disrupt the surroundings, yet they’re easy to go up and down.
For a couple of hours, we soaked in the rich color and intricate patterns of the sandstone, the lush spring green of the trees, and the screams of delight coming from the unseen watering hole below. Bell Smith Springs would be lovely in any season, even winter.
Calling it an early day, we passed through Golconda again, picking up some groceries and driving through the Golconda Historic District, which includes Buel House, “preserved as an example of a working-class home’s 146-year occupation by one family.”
And so off to the Hiker cabin, leftovers, and laundry.
