A mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters
On the weekend of October 10 and 11, arkuat and I went camping at Great River Bluffs State Park.
Raphael found out some years ago that that corner of the state has a microclimate that makes fall color linger longer than almost anywhere else. For several years we drove out there in mid-to-late fall and hiked out King's Bluff through the oak-hickory-maple forest, to stand on a ridge with goat prairie descending to farmland on one side and a huge misty view of the Mississippi, a bunch of islands, some unknown windings and backwaters, and the bluffs of Wisconsin on the other. It was always a lovely hike, but it's a lot of driving for a day trip, and Raphael also found it frustrating that regardless of the general weather forecast or any nearby conditions, there was always a haze over the view. So the park fell out of our regular rotation.
A few years ago Eric wanted to explore Wisconsin a little, and I had looked at a dark-sky site and seen that Wildcat Mountain State Park in Wisconsin seemed to have much darker skies than much of the surrounding area. Commenters said that the picnic overlook and the group camp had some great dark skies at least some of the time. We made plans to stay in LaCrosse, poke around the driftless area and several Wisconsin state parks during the day, and try stargazing at Wildcat Canyon. We took Highway 61 south along the Mississippi. We were discussing how the turn for LaCrosse was almost upon us when we came around a small curve in the road and saw two enormous bluffs looming up, patched with yellow and orange and red, with the golden brown of the goat prairie grasses on their most impossibly steep sides. After a moment of the kind of confusion one feels when seeing a coworker at the theater, the memory came up. The park is right at the intersection of Highway 61 and Interstate 90. Raphael and I had always come to the park via I90, because it was faster.
"I know what those are!" I said. "That's King's Bluff and Queen's Bluff! It's Great River Bluffs." Eric turned around and pulled into a scenic overlook that we'd missed while staring, and we went on staring. Then we agreed that we simply must stop at the park. I didn't know how to get there from 61, but simply continuing on the highway provided a brown sign that said STATE PARK.
The hike was as beautiful as ever, and Eric was excited because there was a lot of shagbark hickory, at the very northernmost point of its range. It was just like the hikes Raphael and I had made, in mid-to-late afternoon at a time of year when sunset comes early. There was a haze over the amazing view, and all the seedheads of summer's flowers were made red and golden by the lowering light.
We agreed that we must come back, and we did, at different times of the year, but always at the same time of day.
So at some point we decided that we'd need to stop always camping at Temperance River, and we decided on Great River Bluffs because we could camp later in the year in the microclimate. Now, everyone may laugh, because this was a very long, very mild autumn and we could have camped at Temperance River in complete comfort; and I was worried, in the absence of any frost at all even so late, that ticks and mosquitoes would be an issue.
However, I made us a reservation for Saturday and Sunday nights (I am a frail flower and do not want to be too far from the bathroom at four a.m., and there weren't sites near the bathrooms available on Friday). Eric arranged for a rental car, I got groceries, and on Saturday the 10th of October we accordingly set out.
We were running late. One must occupy one's campsite by four p.m. or the park can give it away, if it wants to. We didn't want to take I90, but we did take 52 to Rochester and only then cut over to Highway 61. It was a lovely sunny windy fall day. The sumac was rioting all over the lower slopes of bluffs, and once or twice we came into a little clump of houses where everybody seemed to have planted sugar maples, and those were rioting as well. The silver maples and cottonwoods in the bottomlands of the river were a more insipid yellow and appeared generally undecided about what season it was. Paper birches grew almost horizontally from the steep slopes, and waved golden leaves to make up for the indecision of their brethren. We got to the park office just at four. I paid for the vehicle pass, and sighed with relief when the ranger gave me the piece of cardboard with my name and dates to put on the post at the entry to the campsite.
We drove on through the restored prairie. It had been four years since we were last there and there was a lot more restoration than there had been, let alone when Raphael and I first came and they had barely started. All the grasses were golden and the milkweed pods cracked open, trailing silky white. Goldenrod and asters still bloomed here and there.
The King's Bluff trailhead is pretty much the first thing you come to once you've driven past the visitor center, and we'd never been beyond it. We followed the signs to the campground and found ourselves driving on a gravel road on a narrow ridge top, with a yellow and green maple forest sloping steeply down on either side. The sun was getting low and the air between the trees was golden with light and the changing leaves. Partway to the campsite there was an opening in the trees to our left, a slight widening in the road, and a bench with a view of the Mississippi. Never once did we drive past that overlook that there was not a car parked there and people on the bench. It was much the same view that we later got elsewhere, but still, we felt a kind of itch about it when we left on Monday and it was still occupied.
The campground was smaller than the others we've camped at. Great River Bluffs has no electric hookups and no space for large RVs, which at least means one doesn't have to meet the RVs on a narrow road. We drove around to our site. The sites were much closer together than we'd become accustomed to. There were fairly dense plantings of sumac, hickory, birch, maple, and wildflowers, but they had started to thin out with the advent of autumn. Eric backed us into the parking spot, using the backup camera with some glee, and we set up camp. This meant that I stood around, held things, and went hunting for a suitable rock when we realized we'd left the rubber mallet behind somehow. There was a good rock placed carefully at the base of a lovely little three-trunked birch. We made sure to put it back when Eric had finished banging the tent stakes into the rocky ground.
The shower building was a very short walk through the surrounding vegetation, and the door of the women's bathroom was the closest door to our site. Eric congratulated me on finding a campsite that was as close as one could possibly get to the women's restroom.
Once the site was set up we had a snack of Honeycrisp apples and some gorp, both contributed by Eric. Then we walked to the two nearest overlooks. The maple forest was full of long golden light and its entire understory appeared to be maple seedlings. The first overlook faced east over the Mississippi to Wisconsin. The view was similar to that from King's Bluff and the distances were growing gray and purple with twilight. We decided to go look at the western overlook before the sun went down, so we took the rocky winding trail through more maples, then through a more open area where tall grass and seeding goldenrod and blooming asters stood up on either side; and finally up and down through birch and aspen and basswood. Ferns were still green and there were more asters blooming in the woods. We overtook a family with two children and a dog. One of the kids asked us eagerly if we had seen any rattlesnakes. We had to confess that we hadn't. Eric later saw that there was a big sign in the campground, near the drinking-water pump, about the three kinds of snake that you could encounter in the park; the two non-venomous ones were apparently of no interest. As we came up the last slope to the actual overlook, ominous signs appeared. "WARNING. OVERLOOK AHEAD. KEEP CHILDREN IN HAND." Given that King's Bluff had such steep slopes on either side and, the last time we'd seen it, no warning signs at all, we wondered just how alarming the overlook must be.
The parents behind us collected their children; the little girl, who might have been eight, was very insistent on being told why it was so important to keep children in hand. "Would we really fall over?" "Well," said her mother, "I think you'd be tuned in enough to be careful, but it won't hurt to hold on."
When we got there, the overlook was a short slope of grass fenced off from the steeper drop with wooden railings. One could certainly climb through those and fall if one were assiduous or very wild, but it wasn't half so dangerous as King's Bluff.
The view encompassed several slanting bluffs packed with green oaks and evergreens, patched with yellow aspen and birch and brilliant red and orange maple and sumac. There was a creek valley below us, according to the signs, hidden under the still-abundant foliage. We had talked of watching the sun set, but ended up heading back to our camp site because we still had to make dinner. This was done very successfully by boiling part of a carton of miso-ginger broth on Eric's catfood can stove, putting in a package of Thai Kitchen instant rice noodle soup, and then breaking up a block of silken tofu into it and hastily adding chopped red onion, red bell pepper, baby spinach, and sugar snap peas.
We cleaned up, and Eric made a fire. It was pretty windy, but we managed to avoid most of the smoke. The firewood we'd bought at both Temperance River and Wild River had been birch logs, but Great River Bluffs had given us a bundle of very splintery old pieces of lumber. They are having a lot of trouble with emerald ash borer, which may explain their odd choice of wood. It did eventually stop smoking and make a nice warm fire, which was very welcome as the wind got colder and colder.
After a while I looked up at the clearing in the trees above our site, looked again, and said to Eric, "Is that the Milky Way, or just some haze?"
Eric looked up too. It wasn't haze. We had discussed earlier whether we should walk or drive to the King's Bluff trailhead and decided that it was too far and the gravel road too narrow for walking to be feasible. We were nervous about disturbing other campers with our headlights, but nothing was going to stop us from getting to a clear space to look at that sky. The car, a new one, had no provision for just using parking lights, and probably had no equivalent of parking lights. So we just tried to be as quick and careful as possible.
The trailhead was deserted and had a splendid view of most of the sky. To the southeast the lights of LaCrosse drowned things out, but most of the sky was dark as dark. We walked around craning our necks -- we'd forgotten to bring the lawn chaises we have for stargazing -- and shivering in the cold wind. The sky was so clear and the stars so innumerable that we never actually got out our binoculars. We could see the Andromeda Galaxy without averted vision. Finally we got too cold to be out longer and went back to the campsite. Even then, sheltered, to some extent, by trees and brush from the wind that had come roaring over the restored prairie by the trailhead, we kept looking up at our little window on the galaxy.
"What," I said to Eric, "is that averted-vision stuff to the right of Casseiopeia? Is it just haze?" I had haze on my mind a lot because the daytime views, all the time we were there, were hazy; but the night sky, as it turned out, was not.
"It's the double cluster," said Eric, in an awed tone. He meant ">this. We stared at it for some time, seeing how much of its structure we could discover without any optical aid.
Eventually we got cold and went to bed. When I got up to use the bathroom I had a hard time going back into the tent, because the stars were still there.
In the morning we had coffee (Eric) and tea (me) and breakfast. I'd brought some salmon jerky, which Eric found satisfied the desire for bacon, being sweet, salty, and flavorful. I had some with my oatmeal -- not in it, but with it, and agreed that it was good breakfast food. Then we set out to find all the overlooks we hadn't had time for the evening before. These were all reached from the picnic grounds, which we were curious about anyway. There were some really lovely sugar maples at their peak, as well as some restraint in the form of pine trees and a lot of aspens and birches. The forest along the ridgelines where trails led out to the ends of various bluffs was still predominantly maple, just starting to go gold. The understory was almost entirely maple seedlings. There were a few straggling wildflowers here and there, rather the worse for the recent dry weather and the heat of this particular day, which was forecast to reach 83 F, and did. It was still very windy.
All of the overlooks were fairly crowded with other campers and day hikers coming and going, many with children. The sunny air was flecked and glittering with lady beetles. Having heard a child cry indignantly, "Mom! It bit me!" I figured they were Asian lady beetles. They continually buzzed about, landing on our shirts and taking off again. This overlook had two rocky spots to stand, on different levels, one about eight or ten feet above the other, fenced on their outer rims by more wooden railings. There was the same warning sign at the approach, too: KEEP CHILDREN IN HAND. I began to wonder if my memory of the stark drop from the top of King's Bluff to the river was exaggerated.
This first overlook had the Mississippi and the Black River Delta on its left, and more bluffs sliding off into the distance on its right. The river glittered blue and white where it reflected the sky; the land in the delta was brown and green; the bluffs the same as the ones we'd seen the previous day, patched with brilliant sumac, maple, and aspen, and sewn with the white trunks of aspen and birch, but at least half deep green with evergreens or oaks not ready to call it autumn. Five or six turkey vultures were playing with the updrafts, soaring and banking and apparently having the time of their lives. I am sure they would have converged on any available food they spied in their turnings, but they did look joyful and weightless.
As we went back along the ridge to make room for a large chattering group of hikers, I stumbled on a piece of rock in the path. I looked at it, and demanded of Eric, "Why is all this rock so pocky? It looks like river rock that's had pebbles ground into it by fast water." This was, of course, exactly what it was, and when we got out to King's Bluff the next day the geological marker explained all about it. They have improved and changed a lot of King's Bluff, but I'm pretty sure the basic explanation was in place when Raphael and I first went, and I'd just forgotten.
The path to the next overlook was a longer one on a very narrow ridgetop, and the overlook was packed with loud youngsters in bright clothing, so we dawdled and looked down through the trees at the bits of river that were visible, and had a closer look at the pocky former river rock. The overlook featured, surprise! the Black River Delta. I was actually pleased to be getting a better idea of what all the geographical features were. This overlook, as Eric had pointed out when we left the one with the lady beetles, was in shade rather than sun. We stood leaning on the railing for a while, naming types of trees and pointing out features of Wisconsin to one another.
The trek back to the picnic ground was steep and the weather amazingly warm for October, so I asked if we could sit down in a picnic space about halfway up. It was a pleasant spot, with dappled sunlight and what turned out to be a grove of big-toothed aspen all around it. I asked idly what kind of trees those were, and Eric picked up a leaf from the ground and showed me.
We went back to the campsite and had some lunch, after which we were sleepy as well as too hot. We also exchanged stories of how we'd slept and how hard the ground was even through two sleeping pads, and decided to take a nap. The tent is green and the campsite was nicely shaded, so napping worked very well. Then we drove to Winona for some practical necessities I can't even recall at this point, located the coop for future reference -- we'd been there once before and Eric drove unerringly to the coop, which impressed me --, wandered down to the river but found it too built up for pleasure, admired some houses and old industrial buildings, as well as the bottom lands and bluffs across the river in Wisconsin, mostly either green with emergent vegetation or very pale yellow with maples and cottonwoods trying to decide what season it was; and drove back to the park. We'd hoped to walk in the restored prairie, but first it seemed too hot and then it was almost dark. We made dinner, much beset by mosquitoes lured out in the warm weather, and retreated into the tent again. When it was fully dark we sat by the fire and did more stargazing.
Monday morning was about the same temperature as Sunday evening, but I'd checked the NOAA app on my phone and seen that the high temperature, a pleasant one in the mid-sixties, would be reached around 11 am, after which wind would roar in and the temperature would drop steadily. I was also inconvenienced by a sore throat and general malaise. I have acid reflux and use a wedge pillow to sleep on. I have an inflatable one that I use for conventions and camping, but the pump, when I went to blow up the pillow on our arrival, was missing its nozzle. (I later found the necessary components under my bed. Eric asked, as I was staring at the pump in puzzlement that Saturday afternoon, where the pump had been last before I packed it. "In the suitcase," I said. "It just lives in the suitcase." But, I also recalled, Saffron had been in the suitcase while I was getting ready to pack. I don't know what she did, but it's probably another entry for International Bad Cat Day.) Anyway, I wasn't sure if the sore throat meant I was getting a cold or if it was just a result of sleeping without the right kind of pillow; acid reflux can cause hoarseness, coughing, and a scratchy throat. I felt better after taking a shower, and I really didn't want to miss King's Bluff. I told Eric that I'd be fine on the trip out but was likely to drag behind and get whiny on the way back.
So we packed up all of our things and did a last sweep of the campsite and drove back to the King's Bluff trailhead. The colder, windier weather had arrived pretty much on schedule. The wind was forecast to gust up to 40 mph, and it did seem to be doing that. We took the short interpretive trail to where the path branches off into the oak-hickory forest on King's Bluff, and headed out. For a while you can't see much to the east: the trail is on the western side of the bluff rather than right along the ridge. The trail goes up and down, studded with tree roots and pocky dolomite. There are several openings in the woods with benches facing west and pleasant views of farmland and wooded bluffs. The second and third of these openings, once random meadow, were in the process of being restored, with prairie grasses waving in the wind and the seed heads of many native plants bending in the wind. We admired the old and young shagbark hickory trees. Southeastern Minnesota is the northernmost part of their range. The trees still had their leaves, just starting to turn yellow here and there. Nuts and their shells lay here and there on the trail.
The second restored goat prairie was so impressive that I thought we'd arrived at the end of the trail until I looked behind me to the east and saw just more woods, and no geological marker. We made the last scramble up and down a much narrower and rockier part of the trail, and came up onto the top of the ridge. Ahead of us was a brief stretch of rock and gravel backed by trees. Where the trees start is private land. To our right was the sharp drop I remembered, its edge clothed with shrubs full of orange berries, seeding goldenrod, and stubborn grasses. To our right was the original goat prairie, now much more prairie-like and more extensive. A clump of birches had fallen and the meadow was taking over its location. And there was a bench! I have spent many half-hours sitting on the rocky ground while whoever I was with contemplated the view or took photographs. I contemplated the view, too, just from lower down. The bench was chained to the ground, and a good thing, too.
We sat and looked happily at the view until reminded that we had a schedule. Eric had to work on Tuesday and we'd already used up all of our dawdling time for the trip back.
We said a reluctant farewell to the goat prairie, to the view of the Black River Delta, and to Queen's Bluff, east and a little south. Only scientific expeditions are allowed there, and not many per year. Because of its shape from that vantage point, the fallen tree trunks running down not far from its nose, and the fringe of trees along the ridge and down the sharp slope at the front of the bluff, it has always looked to me like a gigantic stuffed Eyeore toy abandoned by a very large child.
Then we went back through the oak-hickory forest, admiring the burr oaks and learning new things about the growth habits of hickory leaves. We speculated about which of the seeding goldenrods along the path was gray goldenrod. I can recognize the spiral kind, but not gray.
As I had foretold, I got very draggy and whiny on the last half mile. Eric mildly reminded me to appreciate my last view of the autumnal prairie, especially since we had not managed to go hiking in it: the milkweed silk bursting from its pods like arrested smoke in stop-motion, the gray and white seedheads of goldenrod, the grasses in a dozen shades of gold and brown and gray, the smallest white asters still blooming, and a few thistles that had gone brown and gone to seed, and then put up one bright green branch more; one of these was blooming and the other still in bud. Then he went ahead to get the car and drive it around to where I'd be coming out of the trees, to spare me a few steps at the end.
We drove home along 61. It was a lovely sunny day when the wind wasn't able to get at you, and we enjoyed all of the views though we stopped at none of them.
By the next day, it was clear that I did have a cold. But I didn't get it camping. David had had one the previous week, and I'd gone to Ctein and John Sandford's book event at the Har-Mar Mall Barnes and Noble, where there was ample opportunity to get other people's viruses.
Even if I had gotten a cold from the camping, it would have been worth it.
Pamela
Raphael found out some years ago that that corner of the state has a microclimate that makes fall color linger longer than almost anywhere else. For several years we drove out there in mid-to-late fall and hiked out King's Bluff through the oak-hickory-maple forest, to stand on a ridge with goat prairie descending to farmland on one side and a huge misty view of the Mississippi, a bunch of islands, some unknown windings and backwaters, and the bluffs of Wisconsin on the other. It was always a lovely hike, but it's a lot of driving for a day trip, and Raphael also found it frustrating that regardless of the general weather forecast or any nearby conditions, there was always a haze over the view. So the park fell out of our regular rotation.
A few years ago Eric wanted to explore Wisconsin a little, and I had looked at a dark-sky site and seen that Wildcat Mountain State Park in Wisconsin seemed to have much darker skies than much of the surrounding area. Commenters said that the picnic overlook and the group camp had some great dark skies at least some of the time. We made plans to stay in LaCrosse, poke around the driftless area and several Wisconsin state parks during the day, and try stargazing at Wildcat Canyon. We took Highway 61 south along the Mississippi. We were discussing how the turn for LaCrosse was almost upon us when we came around a small curve in the road and saw two enormous bluffs looming up, patched with yellow and orange and red, with the golden brown of the goat prairie grasses on their most impossibly steep sides. After a moment of the kind of confusion one feels when seeing a coworker at the theater, the memory came up. The park is right at the intersection of Highway 61 and Interstate 90. Raphael and I had always come to the park via I90, because it was faster.
"I know what those are!" I said. "That's King's Bluff and Queen's Bluff! It's Great River Bluffs." Eric turned around and pulled into a scenic overlook that we'd missed while staring, and we went on staring. Then we agreed that we simply must stop at the park. I didn't know how to get there from 61, but simply continuing on the highway provided a brown sign that said STATE PARK.
The hike was as beautiful as ever, and Eric was excited because there was a lot of shagbark hickory, at the very northernmost point of its range. It was just like the hikes Raphael and I had made, in mid-to-late afternoon at a time of year when sunset comes early. There was a haze over the amazing view, and all the seedheads of summer's flowers were made red and golden by the lowering light.
We agreed that we must come back, and we did, at different times of the year, but always at the same time of day.
So at some point we decided that we'd need to stop always camping at Temperance River, and we decided on Great River Bluffs because we could camp later in the year in the microclimate. Now, everyone may laugh, because this was a very long, very mild autumn and we could have camped at Temperance River in complete comfort; and I was worried, in the absence of any frost at all even so late, that ticks and mosquitoes would be an issue.
However, I made us a reservation for Saturday and Sunday nights (I am a frail flower and do not want to be too far from the bathroom at four a.m., and there weren't sites near the bathrooms available on Friday). Eric arranged for a rental car, I got groceries, and on Saturday the 10th of October we accordingly set out.
We were running late. One must occupy one's campsite by four p.m. or the park can give it away, if it wants to. We didn't want to take I90, but we did take 52 to Rochester and only then cut over to Highway 61. It was a lovely sunny windy fall day. The sumac was rioting all over the lower slopes of bluffs, and once or twice we came into a little clump of houses where everybody seemed to have planted sugar maples, and those were rioting as well. The silver maples and cottonwoods in the bottomlands of the river were a more insipid yellow and appeared generally undecided about what season it was. Paper birches grew almost horizontally from the steep slopes, and waved golden leaves to make up for the indecision of their brethren. We got to the park office just at four. I paid for the vehicle pass, and sighed with relief when the ranger gave me the piece of cardboard with my name and dates to put on the post at the entry to the campsite.
We drove on through the restored prairie. It had been four years since we were last there and there was a lot more restoration than there had been, let alone when Raphael and I first came and they had barely started. All the grasses were golden and the milkweed pods cracked open, trailing silky white. Goldenrod and asters still bloomed here and there.
The King's Bluff trailhead is pretty much the first thing you come to once you've driven past the visitor center, and we'd never been beyond it. We followed the signs to the campground and found ourselves driving on a gravel road on a narrow ridge top, with a yellow and green maple forest sloping steeply down on either side. The sun was getting low and the air between the trees was golden with light and the changing leaves. Partway to the campsite there was an opening in the trees to our left, a slight widening in the road, and a bench with a view of the Mississippi. Never once did we drive past that overlook that there was not a car parked there and people on the bench. It was much the same view that we later got elsewhere, but still, we felt a kind of itch about it when we left on Monday and it was still occupied.
The campground was smaller than the others we've camped at. Great River Bluffs has no electric hookups and no space for large RVs, which at least means one doesn't have to meet the RVs on a narrow road. We drove around to our site. The sites were much closer together than we'd become accustomed to. There were fairly dense plantings of sumac, hickory, birch, maple, and wildflowers, but they had started to thin out with the advent of autumn. Eric backed us into the parking spot, using the backup camera with some glee, and we set up camp. This meant that I stood around, held things, and went hunting for a suitable rock when we realized we'd left the rubber mallet behind somehow. There was a good rock placed carefully at the base of a lovely little three-trunked birch. We made sure to put it back when Eric had finished banging the tent stakes into the rocky ground.
The shower building was a very short walk through the surrounding vegetation, and the door of the women's bathroom was the closest door to our site. Eric congratulated me on finding a campsite that was as close as one could possibly get to the women's restroom.
Once the site was set up we had a snack of Honeycrisp apples and some gorp, both contributed by Eric. Then we walked to the two nearest overlooks. The maple forest was full of long golden light and its entire understory appeared to be maple seedlings. The first overlook faced east over the Mississippi to Wisconsin. The view was similar to that from King's Bluff and the distances were growing gray and purple with twilight. We decided to go look at the western overlook before the sun went down, so we took the rocky winding trail through more maples, then through a more open area where tall grass and seeding goldenrod and blooming asters stood up on either side; and finally up and down through birch and aspen and basswood. Ferns were still green and there were more asters blooming in the woods. We overtook a family with two children and a dog. One of the kids asked us eagerly if we had seen any rattlesnakes. We had to confess that we hadn't. Eric later saw that there was a big sign in the campground, near the drinking-water pump, about the three kinds of snake that you could encounter in the park; the two non-venomous ones were apparently of no interest. As we came up the last slope to the actual overlook, ominous signs appeared. "WARNING. OVERLOOK AHEAD. KEEP CHILDREN IN HAND." Given that King's Bluff had such steep slopes on either side and, the last time we'd seen it, no warning signs at all, we wondered just how alarming the overlook must be.
The parents behind us collected their children; the little girl, who might have been eight, was very insistent on being told why it was so important to keep children in hand. "Would we really fall over?" "Well," said her mother, "I think you'd be tuned in enough to be careful, but it won't hurt to hold on."
When we got there, the overlook was a short slope of grass fenced off from the steeper drop with wooden railings. One could certainly climb through those and fall if one were assiduous or very wild, but it wasn't half so dangerous as King's Bluff.
The view encompassed several slanting bluffs packed with green oaks and evergreens, patched with yellow aspen and birch and brilliant red and orange maple and sumac. There was a creek valley below us, according to the signs, hidden under the still-abundant foliage. We had talked of watching the sun set, but ended up heading back to our camp site because we still had to make dinner. This was done very successfully by boiling part of a carton of miso-ginger broth on Eric's catfood can stove, putting in a package of Thai Kitchen instant rice noodle soup, and then breaking up a block of silken tofu into it and hastily adding chopped red onion, red bell pepper, baby spinach, and sugar snap peas.
We cleaned up, and Eric made a fire. It was pretty windy, but we managed to avoid most of the smoke. The firewood we'd bought at both Temperance River and Wild River had been birch logs, but Great River Bluffs had given us a bundle of very splintery old pieces of lumber. They are having a lot of trouble with emerald ash borer, which may explain their odd choice of wood. It did eventually stop smoking and make a nice warm fire, which was very welcome as the wind got colder and colder.
After a while I looked up at the clearing in the trees above our site, looked again, and said to Eric, "Is that the Milky Way, or just some haze?"
Eric looked up too. It wasn't haze. We had discussed earlier whether we should walk or drive to the King's Bluff trailhead and decided that it was too far and the gravel road too narrow for walking to be feasible. We were nervous about disturbing other campers with our headlights, but nothing was going to stop us from getting to a clear space to look at that sky. The car, a new one, had no provision for just using parking lights, and probably had no equivalent of parking lights. So we just tried to be as quick and careful as possible.
The trailhead was deserted and had a splendid view of most of the sky. To the southeast the lights of LaCrosse drowned things out, but most of the sky was dark as dark. We walked around craning our necks -- we'd forgotten to bring the lawn chaises we have for stargazing -- and shivering in the cold wind. The sky was so clear and the stars so innumerable that we never actually got out our binoculars. We could see the Andromeda Galaxy without averted vision. Finally we got too cold to be out longer and went back to the campsite. Even then, sheltered, to some extent, by trees and brush from the wind that had come roaring over the restored prairie by the trailhead, we kept looking up at our little window on the galaxy.
"What," I said to Eric, "is that averted-vision stuff to the right of Casseiopeia? Is it just haze?" I had haze on my mind a lot because the daytime views, all the time we were there, were hazy; but the night sky, as it turned out, was not.
"It's the double cluster," said Eric, in an awed tone. He meant ">this. We stared at it for some time, seeing how much of its structure we could discover without any optical aid.
Eventually we got cold and went to bed. When I got up to use the bathroom I had a hard time going back into the tent, because the stars were still there.
In the morning we had coffee (Eric) and tea (me) and breakfast. I'd brought some salmon jerky, which Eric found satisfied the desire for bacon, being sweet, salty, and flavorful. I had some with my oatmeal -- not in it, but with it, and agreed that it was good breakfast food. Then we set out to find all the overlooks we hadn't had time for the evening before. These were all reached from the picnic grounds, which we were curious about anyway. There were some really lovely sugar maples at their peak, as well as some restraint in the form of pine trees and a lot of aspens and birches. The forest along the ridgelines where trails led out to the ends of various bluffs was still predominantly maple, just starting to go gold. The understory was almost entirely maple seedlings. There were a few straggling wildflowers here and there, rather the worse for the recent dry weather and the heat of this particular day, which was forecast to reach 83 F, and did. It was still very windy.
All of the overlooks were fairly crowded with other campers and day hikers coming and going, many with children. The sunny air was flecked and glittering with lady beetles. Having heard a child cry indignantly, "Mom! It bit me!" I figured they were Asian lady beetles. They continually buzzed about, landing on our shirts and taking off again. This overlook had two rocky spots to stand, on different levels, one about eight or ten feet above the other, fenced on their outer rims by more wooden railings. There was the same warning sign at the approach, too: KEEP CHILDREN IN HAND. I began to wonder if my memory of the stark drop from the top of King's Bluff to the river was exaggerated.
This first overlook had the Mississippi and the Black River Delta on its left, and more bluffs sliding off into the distance on its right. The river glittered blue and white where it reflected the sky; the land in the delta was brown and green; the bluffs the same as the ones we'd seen the previous day, patched with brilliant sumac, maple, and aspen, and sewn with the white trunks of aspen and birch, but at least half deep green with evergreens or oaks not ready to call it autumn. Five or six turkey vultures were playing with the updrafts, soaring and banking and apparently having the time of their lives. I am sure they would have converged on any available food they spied in their turnings, but they did look joyful and weightless.
As we went back along the ridge to make room for a large chattering group of hikers, I stumbled on a piece of rock in the path. I looked at it, and demanded of Eric, "Why is all this rock so pocky? It looks like river rock that's had pebbles ground into it by fast water." This was, of course, exactly what it was, and when we got out to King's Bluff the next day the geological marker explained all about it. They have improved and changed a lot of King's Bluff, but I'm pretty sure the basic explanation was in place when Raphael and I first went, and I'd just forgotten.
The path to the next overlook was a longer one on a very narrow ridgetop, and the overlook was packed with loud youngsters in bright clothing, so we dawdled and looked down through the trees at the bits of river that were visible, and had a closer look at the pocky former river rock. The overlook featured, surprise! the Black River Delta. I was actually pleased to be getting a better idea of what all the geographical features were. This overlook, as Eric had pointed out when we left the one with the lady beetles, was in shade rather than sun. We stood leaning on the railing for a while, naming types of trees and pointing out features of Wisconsin to one another.
The trek back to the picnic ground was steep and the weather amazingly warm for October, so I asked if we could sit down in a picnic space about halfway up. It was a pleasant spot, with dappled sunlight and what turned out to be a grove of big-toothed aspen all around it. I asked idly what kind of trees those were, and Eric picked up a leaf from the ground and showed me.
We went back to the campsite and had some lunch, after which we were sleepy as well as too hot. We also exchanged stories of how we'd slept and how hard the ground was even through two sleeping pads, and decided to take a nap. The tent is green and the campsite was nicely shaded, so napping worked very well. Then we drove to Winona for some practical necessities I can't even recall at this point, located the coop for future reference -- we'd been there once before and Eric drove unerringly to the coop, which impressed me --, wandered down to the river but found it too built up for pleasure, admired some houses and old industrial buildings, as well as the bottom lands and bluffs across the river in Wisconsin, mostly either green with emergent vegetation or very pale yellow with maples and cottonwoods trying to decide what season it was; and drove back to the park. We'd hoped to walk in the restored prairie, but first it seemed too hot and then it was almost dark. We made dinner, much beset by mosquitoes lured out in the warm weather, and retreated into the tent again. When it was fully dark we sat by the fire and did more stargazing.
Monday morning was about the same temperature as Sunday evening, but I'd checked the NOAA app on my phone and seen that the high temperature, a pleasant one in the mid-sixties, would be reached around 11 am, after which wind would roar in and the temperature would drop steadily. I was also inconvenienced by a sore throat and general malaise. I have acid reflux and use a wedge pillow to sleep on. I have an inflatable one that I use for conventions and camping, but the pump, when I went to blow up the pillow on our arrival, was missing its nozzle. (I later found the necessary components under my bed. Eric asked, as I was staring at the pump in puzzlement that Saturday afternoon, where the pump had been last before I packed it. "In the suitcase," I said. "It just lives in the suitcase." But, I also recalled, Saffron had been in the suitcase while I was getting ready to pack. I don't know what she did, but it's probably another entry for International Bad Cat Day.) Anyway, I wasn't sure if the sore throat meant I was getting a cold or if it was just a result of sleeping without the right kind of pillow; acid reflux can cause hoarseness, coughing, and a scratchy throat. I felt better after taking a shower, and I really didn't want to miss King's Bluff. I told Eric that I'd be fine on the trip out but was likely to drag behind and get whiny on the way back.
So we packed up all of our things and did a last sweep of the campsite and drove back to the King's Bluff trailhead. The colder, windier weather had arrived pretty much on schedule. The wind was forecast to gust up to 40 mph, and it did seem to be doing that. We took the short interpretive trail to where the path branches off into the oak-hickory forest on King's Bluff, and headed out. For a while you can't see much to the east: the trail is on the western side of the bluff rather than right along the ridge. The trail goes up and down, studded with tree roots and pocky dolomite. There are several openings in the woods with benches facing west and pleasant views of farmland and wooded bluffs. The second and third of these openings, once random meadow, were in the process of being restored, with prairie grasses waving in the wind and the seed heads of many native plants bending in the wind. We admired the old and young shagbark hickory trees. Southeastern Minnesota is the northernmost part of their range. The trees still had their leaves, just starting to turn yellow here and there. Nuts and their shells lay here and there on the trail.
The second restored goat prairie was so impressive that I thought we'd arrived at the end of the trail until I looked behind me to the east and saw just more woods, and no geological marker. We made the last scramble up and down a much narrower and rockier part of the trail, and came up onto the top of the ridge. Ahead of us was a brief stretch of rock and gravel backed by trees. Where the trees start is private land. To our right was the sharp drop I remembered, its edge clothed with shrubs full of orange berries, seeding goldenrod, and stubborn grasses. To our right was the original goat prairie, now much more prairie-like and more extensive. A clump of birches had fallen and the meadow was taking over its location. And there was a bench! I have spent many half-hours sitting on the rocky ground while whoever I was with contemplated the view or took photographs. I contemplated the view, too, just from lower down. The bench was chained to the ground, and a good thing, too.
We sat and looked happily at the view until reminded that we had a schedule. Eric had to work on Tuesday and we'd already used up all of our dawdling time for the trip back.
We said a reluctant farewell to the goat prairie, to the view of the Black River Delta, and to Queen's Bluff, east and a little south. Only scientific expeditions are allowed there, and not many per year. Because of its shape from that vantage point, the fallen tree trunks running down not far from its nose, and the fringe of trees along the ridge and down the sharp slope at the front of the bluff, it has always looked to me like a gigantic stuffed Eyeore toy abandoned by a very large child.
Then we went back through the oak-hickory forest, admiring the burr oaks and learning new things about the growth habits of hickory leaves. We speculated about which of the seeding goldenrods along the path was gray goldenrod. I can recognize the spiral kind, but not gray.
As I had foretold, I got very draggy and whiny on the last half mile. Eric mildly reminded me to appreciate my last view of the autumnal prairie, especially since we had not managed to go hiking in it: the milkweed silk bursting from its pods like arrested smoke in stop-motion, the gray and white seedheads of goldenrod, the grasses in a dozen shades of gold and brown and gray, the smallest white asters still blooming, and a few thistles that had gone brown and gone to seed, and then put up one bright green branch more; one of these was blooming and the other still in bud. Then he went ahead to get the car and drive it around to where I'd be coming out of the trees, to spare me a few steps at the end.
We drove home along 61. It was a lovely sunny day when the wind wasn't able to get at you, and we enjoyed all of the views though we stopped at none of them.
By the next day, it was clear that I did have a cold. But I didn't get it camping. David had had one the previous week, and I'd gone to Ctein and John Sandford's book event at the Har-Mar Mall Barnes and Noble, where there was ample opportunity to get other people's viruses.
Even if I had gotten a cold from the camping, it would have been worth it.
Pamela