A Potpourri Of Hikes & Bikes

 

Blog-wize I'm still stuck in Illinois (This was all several weeks ago but I tend not to blog realtime because I'm a paranoid old cuss who wants to remain in the shadows.), waiting for my appointment to go pick up the Wife from her sister-visit.

But I wasn't just sitting around like a mushroom on a fence post (I have no idea where that came from but when shit like this pops up ya just gota go with it!)

What follows is a collection of hikes and bikes that I occupied myself with during the wait, in reverse-chronilogical order in which I did them because somehow that seemed to make sense when I sat down to write this.

One last shout on Tunnel Hill Trail

I was under instructions not to pick up the Wife untill around 1400 on Tuesday. Because the pickup point was only a little more than 3 hours away I had some time to kill after I broke camp that morning, so I finished off my portion of this trip with one last bike ride from Vienna, down the Tunnel Hill Trail to Belknap, a small collection of homes with a trail access point.

This section of the trail is mostly flat and it's a pleasant, but not awesome, 16 mile out&back ride. 

If you are so inclined and have the time, about 2/3 of the way down to Belknap there's an access point to a section of the Cache River State Nature Area where you can trade the bike for hiking shoes because there's a complex of trails along the Cache River back in there.

Bell Smith Springs

Bell Smith Springs was the last stop of a three-hike day on Monday,

though the short stroll I took here could hardly be called a hike. (For a better look at the trails check out my 2017 visit here.) By now the day was getting on and school was out. Several mothers had turned up in the parking lot with loaded minivans in an attempt to burn off thier kids excess energy

Steps cut down through the side of the canyon

on the steep trails. Admirable, and a wholesome activity, but not my scene, so I didn't hang around long.

On my way out I did poke my head into the Redbud campground just to look around. Nothing much has changed since I last stayed here, except that the well-pump seemed quieter this time. Not quite so chalk-boardy

Jackson Falls

Jackson Falls is an interesting spot, even on days like today when the water's not running.

The steep canyon walls make this a popular climbing area with a number of pitches to choose from.

Those same steep walls that make for good technical climbing mean that there's two seperate trail-systems in here. One up on top and another down below, with no direct connection between them. You either pick the trailhead for the upper trails, or go on down the road a ways, actually right to the end, to the trailhead for the lower trails.

BTW, you might get away with 2-wheel drive back here on FR 494, but it's a fairly primitive, one-lane road in rocky terrain that fords several streams, so high-clearance is recomended.

Today I stuck to the North Bluff Trail up on top of the canyon.

If you take this trail far enough

and look back over your shoulder at just the right spot near Railroad Rock, a little beyond the official end of the trail, you can get a glimpse of the active BNFS tracks taking advantage of the narrow-bottomed canyon on thier way north out of Metropolis down on the Ohio River.

Millstone Bluff Archeological Area

While I was in the area this year there was some re-paving work being done on SR 146 between the campground and Viena, so I was going north and using SR 147 instead to avoid the construction delays, and that meant I went past this small sign several times.

So come Monday morning I decided to stick my head in there and see what it was about.

Turns out there's quite

 an interesting little site back in there.

After figuring out that the self-guided tour starts behind the trees at the far end of the parking lot, and then slogging up the unrelentingly steep trail,

assisted by steps in the more challenging places,

you get dumped out on the edge of the bluff itself, something that would be called a small mesa in the west.

To make the area up here even more defensible than it already was, the edges of the bluff are also guarded by an encircling stone wall. The same sort of stone wall that gave Stonefort its name.

And as you follow the trail around the bluff

it just keeps getting

more

and more interesting.

OK, not something I would notice untill it's pointed out, but here is one of the 1500 year old depressions left in the ground by a family home.

Makes me wonder how many other sites I've just obliviously wandered on by during my thousands of miles of hikes over the years.

I wonder if there's an Amateur Archeology 101 class I could take to highten my awareness?

There's one spot up there where a platform lets you look down on a relativly flat rock surface without actually climbing on it.

If you look hard enough,

and with the assistance of an adjacent "key", you can pick out millenia and a half year old petroglyphs (carved into the rock as opposed to painted on pictographs) there below your feet!

Anyway, that's it. Now it's time to head back to the chaotic,  frenetic, confusion of the St. Louis area to collect the Wife and head on back home.