Sunny and in the 20’s

 

Nothing like the last minute to get ya motivated!  Today, January 30th, I finally got to my first 12 hike destination.  It’s not that I’ve been putting it off, it just didn’t happen until now. The weather has been nice this month, I’ve been hiking a mile + every day, I’ve gone to other parks but none that were new to me.  Today I went to the Madison School forest. It’s only a few miles from my home and I’ve been wanting to explore it for years.   

 

The park is 307 acres in the unglaciated driftless area southwest of Verona.  I started off in the day use area parking lot and took the trail to the far right. (Sorry I forgot to check the name of the trial) The trail starts on the top of a  hill and gently meanders down through an oak forest, into a towering pine plantation and then into a lovely prairie at the bottom. From here the trail crosses the road.

 

Up until this point I had been following a fairly worn path in the snow with lots of large boot tracks and dog tracks. (the sign in the parking lot clearly states no dogs)  Crossing the road the foot prints stopped, no one had ventured this way since the last snow fall.  There were some rock formations that I wanted to check out so I continued on. I have to admit that as I was slipping and sliding climbing up the rocky hillside I wondered if it was a good idea to be doing this by myself, especially since I had not told anyone where I was going.  (At this pointed I check my cell phone reception just to be sure it worked.) I made it up without injury. The rock formations are relatively small but beautiful just the same and the view from the top was nice.

 

 From here the trail went up into the school forest camp area and since I was not sure if I was supposed to be in there or not I took the driveway back down to the road and crossed the street to where it met back up with another trail.  At one point on this trail I stopped to photograph a tree stump and while I was kneeling on the ground to take the picture an owl swooped down from a tree above me.  It always amazes to me how quite they are when they fly.  I didn’t hear a thing, the only reason I noticed it was because of the motion in an otherwise motionless sky.   

 

The trail I was now on had no people tracks on it although it did have plenty of deer and canine tracks. I’m thinking they were from a fox or a coyote.  The canine tracks looked pretty fresh so I wondered if I would see one in the distance, but never did.  Following this trail through the pine plantation lead me back to the road. (Note to self, read the map before I leave so I know where the trails are!)  I ended up following the road back to the trail head.  A few hundred yards before the trail head I passed a small stand of aspen trees being illuminated by the setting sun. Beautiful and worth the road walking.

 

All in all it is a very nice little area to explore.  You could walk the whole trail system in an hour or two depending how much you like to wonder.  The terrain has some hills but nothing to steep and a very nice variety of ecosystems.  During the hour that I was there I didn’t see any other people in the park although when I got back to the parking area there was one other car in the lot.  I’m already planning to go back in the summer to explore when everything is in full bloom.