It's All New to Me - Day 337

  Today's hiking was 100 % off road, and 100 % new since I was last here. In fact, about 3 miles near the beginning are so new that they aren't really open yet. However, we were given good maps and advance info. The big challenge of the section, and of the day, was that we had to wade Tyler Forks. Yes, this is the smaller river from yesterday with all the waterfalls and fast water. Here, it is barely moving, but it was a little deeper than might be comfortable. Bill went across first.

I'm shorter, but we both made it safely across. The DNR is going to build a bridge here, but they won't start until next year.

We were constantly amazed at the outcrops of rocks. I just don't remember this about Wisconsin. And I couldn't find out much about their composition in a fast search. For now, I'll just say they were impressive. And big... we climbed over 300 feet up one pile called Porcupine Hill.

At the top were the remains of a very old fire tower. Much older than the forest service ones. In fact, I've never seen tower foundations of cribs filled with rocks. And it only had 3 legs. One volunteer said that the county thinks it is from about 1900.

Speaking of volunteers, we ran into Joe and Bethany, out doing trail work.

This huge bridge over Tyler Forks, was built with donations in memory of Bethany's husband. This is a truly impressive structure.

We've now moved very far upstream on Tyler Forks. Remember, it joined the Bad River at Brownstone Falls. But that doesn't mean it's a boring little creek. Nope. It's got rocks and flow enough to create Wren Falls.

One really interesting fact is that there have been efforts from time to time to mine gold in Wisconsin. This is the remains of the Maxim Mine which operated from 1903- 1910. There was an attempt to mine gold and copper, but it was never economically viable.

The shell of a steam drill was abandoned. We also found what was probably the well.

The afternoon was hillier than we expected, but we just kept walking. Things leveled out along the Potato River.

In other fun news, we watched a northern harrier hunting, found a tunnel in one of the rock piles that you could crawl through, and speculated a lot about the rocks.

Miles today: 14.9. Total miles so far: 3945.4.

See Bad River