Caveat Lector

Supposedly there were boats and aquabikes and similar fun things for rent at Fond du Lac’s Lakeshore Park. Well, we looked and didn’t find them. (Why none of the promotional material actually gave directions I can’t say.) So we tooled out of town and headed for Kettle Moraine State Forest, Northern Unit.

First we stopped off at the Ice Age Visitor Center, which has a great overlook around back. Lovely, not-to-be-missed view.

Now. The short course on glacial topography. Glaciers pick up a whole bunch of junk as they roll over the landscape. Glacial topography is the effect of various ways of dumping that junk. Some junk gets dumped at the edges of the glacier as it moves; that forms moraines. Some junk gets dumped into holes in the ice by meltwater; that forms conical hills called kames. Some junk gets dumped by streams running under the ice; that forms snaky ridges called eskers. And some junk gets dumped when a leftover chunk of ice sinks into the ground as it melts; that forms little lakes and ponds called kettles (because they resemble them).

Junk can also do pretty impressive damage to solid bedrock. In some places, it got whirled around by currents and actually drilled into the rock to significant depths, forming a pothole.

(Isn’t this terrific terminology, by the way? Love it. Still trying to find out the derivations for most of it—“moraine” is obviously French, but “esker?”)

You can find all these things in Wisconsin, which got a major glacial makeover in the last Ice Age, and most of them in Kettle Moraine State Forest.

We walked a substantial part of the Zillmer Trails. (If you’ve been there, we started out on the yellow trail, cut across on the red, and came back on the yellow.) There were trilliums everywhere, white three-petaled flowers pretty enough for a bridal bouquet, as well as red columbine, wild geranium, and some flowers we don’t know. (We’re even more amateurish botanists than birders.)

More warblers, and another scarlet tanager, but the ornithological highlight of the day was a pair of eastern blue grosbeaks. (Grosbeaks! No, indigo buntings! No, grosbeaks! No, indigo buntings! Yeah, okay, grosbeaks. Brownish stripes on the wings. The obliging creatures returned to the tree we were watching several times until we had this sorted out.)

We stopped for a bit to enjoy the silence under a little stand of spruce. David says he thinks the pine needles damp out the noise; I think he’s right.

We drove through the forest after our hike, getting lost a couple more times (for as small a town as it is, Dundee should not be so confusing!) and ticking off a rather rude group of motorcyclists, but the drive was very much worth the momentary annoyances.

We stopped at Butler Lake briefly, and then went on to the Parnell Trail Area to climb the observation tower. My word, what a place! It must be spectacular in fall; it’s plenty gorgeous in spring.

Why did the wild turkey cross the road, somewhere in Sheboygan County? So Dorothea wouldn’t feel bad about getting lost again, natch. We knew we were going north, which was the right direction, so we knew if we kept going we’d have to hit Route 23 eventually… and eventually we did. We drove west to the shore of Lake Winnebago, and followed that north to Appleton.

Where I got us lost. Again. Turned the wrong way on 441, and ended up in Neenah. Nobody hire me as navigator; I’m bloody hopeless.

We found a really terrific Indian restaurant in Appleton, called Sai Ram. Highly recommend it. The maitre d’ was rather surprised when I correctly identified the music playing as the soundtrack from Lagaan.

We spent the rest of the evening tossing out suggestions for the next day, but more on that anon.