Mill Bluff Trifecta! and a few random notes

Saturday morning I was up early and managed to get out for a hike before the sun was up; Mill Bluff State Park was my choice. I avoided the three deer crossing the highway and made it to the park just a bit after dawn.

Since I had so much time I thought I would hike all of the trails, starting with the nature trail around the base of Mill Bluff. I love hiking the trails at Mill Bluff, but one drawback is the proximity to Interstate 90 / 94; you can hear the passing traffic just about everywhere in the park.

The interstate seen from the nature trail at the closest point.

Once you complete the loop of the nature trail you arrive at the stairway to the top of Mill Bluff, built last century during the Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

The loop intersects the stairway about 50 shallow steps up.
From here on the going becomes noticeably steeper!

There are about 170 steps remaining, entirely made from stone from the area …

This brick is the only exception! How did it happen to get in here?

Once you get to the top, the traffic noise returns; sometimes it’s enough to make radio operating difficult from this otherwise excellent spot.

View from the observation platform on the north end of the bluff. Camel Bluff (and others) are visible in the distance. 2 years ago I operated from here on Field Day with just a thermos of coffee and the internal battery of the Xiegu X-6100 into a 20 meter BNC-adapter dipole.
I like to keep one hand on that excellent sturdy railing when going down!

The previous post has better pictures of the Camel Bluff trail; I was kind of on a roll and hardly paused to take any this time around.

Going homeward I encountered more critters; first there were 2 chickens out free-ranging by the side of the road. Were they thinking about crossing it, but still uncertain? A few miles along there was an entire family of tame geese in the process of crossing the road, back to the yard after their adventure; they had traffic (such as it was) stopped going both ways.

I can’t remember what the random thoughts were that I wanted to write about when I started … maybe they will come back to me later.

Thanks for stopping by to visit!


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