Wisconsin

50 Hikes in Wisconsin: Hike #36 – Cherokee Marsh

March 29, 2016 by Abbigail Kriebs Leave a Comment

Guess what? It’s hiking season!

At least, it is supposed to be.

Few things are as nice as getting outside the first day of a Wisconsin spring and not wearing a jacket, hiking through a forest that you know if just about to burst into life. While we have had a couple of warm days this month, there have also been some spring setbacks.

Like an ice storm last Thursday.

Scott and I had made plans with ourselves to go hiking on Good Friday – what’s a good free day off of work in spring if you don’t spend it outside? We were unfazed by a little snow – I mean, we are the people who drove 6+ hours north in January just to get a little extra this winter – so even thought it was going to be a bit soggy, we decided to go anyway. We picked Madison’s Cherokee Marsh out of our 50 Hikes in Wisconsin book (we have an older edition), #36 in the book and our first of the year. You can see all the #50HikesWI treks that we do here.

This park gets a lot of love from Madison residents, and I can see why: it’s in the city, easy to get to, and really kid-friendly. The marsh is a natural sponge for the Madison area, cleaning up some of the water supply runoff from nearby fields and parking lots before it makes its way into the Yahara River and into Madison’s Lake Mendota, Lake Monona, and others.

Our early spring visit paired with a late-season snow meant that there wasn’t much green to see, but the park was quiet and mostly empty, and the fresh snow allowed us to see some critter tracks that we don’t normally. We think these must be from a martin, but we’re not 100% sure.

The plus side to an ice storm the night before? All the trees looked covered in a delicate layer of glass, sparkling in the bright sun.

It was nice to get outside and experience something you don’t often get to see.

This is 9/50 in our quest to hike all 50 hikes from 50 Hikes in Wisconsin. You can see photos from all our hikes here.

Story in Photos: Pour Your [Iron] Heart Out

February 9, 2016 by Abbigail Kriebs 1 Comment

Scott always says “Any day I get to spend outside is a good day.” While I don’t agree with him 100% (if it’s raining, I’m not going outside unless I have to), I will concede that spending most of the day outside on Saturday made for a very good day.

On Saturday morning, grateful for a sunny forecast in Madison, we layered on our warm clothes, coats, and hats and made our way down to the Atwood neighborhood for the 7th Annual Pour Your Heart Out Community Iron Pour. Alisa Toninato of FeLion Studios hosted, bringing in friends and fellow metalworkers from three or four states to help with the event held in the Sector67 parking lot.

Ahead of the event, we purchased two sand molds with heart shapes cut into them. We then carved our designs into the heart-shaped molds to make them our own. We dropped them off first thing when we arrived, and then waited for the event to kick off, which really meant waiting for the large homemade stove to get hot enough to melt some iron.

The crew took turns pouring coal coke and scrap iron into the furnace, which then melted the iron down with the help of a bright orange leaf blower. The metal needed to reach over 2300 degrees in order to be pour-able, so it did take a little while.

And then things got interesting.

The crew collected the spewing metal in a large, two-handed ladle and smaller, one-handed ladles, and then poured it into each individual sand mold on the tables – the ones we had carved and brought to the event.

How cool is that?

After the molds cooled enough – it really only took about five minutes – they were dumped out onto wood laid out on the pavement to cool even more. At this point, they broke them out of their sand molds and toted the metal inside to be wire brushed and cleaned up for us to take home, leaving behind piles and piles of used sand molds.

We took a great and wandered the Atwoood neighborhood for a bit, and then came back a couple hours later to pick up our finished hearts. We had to dig them out of a pile of all the completed molds inside of Sector67.

Scott found his pretty easily, and mine didn’t take too much longer. He carved an anvil into the center of each of his, keeping with the theme of the event and also with his newish obsession with the idea of becoming a blacksmith.

We spent a little more time outside, checking out the event as the sun dipped a little lower in the sky, glad for the warm temperatures and a day spent on a new adventure with friends.

We’ve got an entire year now to dream up ideas for our next sand molds. You can bet we’ll be back again in 2017.

Have you ever been to an iron pour? Or anything similar? What did you think?

50 Hikes in Wisconsin: Hike #30 – Devil’s Lake State Park

December 3, 2015 by Abbigail Kriebs Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago my husband and I were looking at a Saturday with nothing on the calendar – an absolute rarity. We both had a million things we could have done at home, but we decided to ditch the to-do lists and just go outside.

We hadn’t gone hiking in a couple months, so we pulled out our 50 Hikes in Wisconsin (we have an older edition) and chose Devil’s Lake State Park.

We avoided this park all summer even though it is so close because it is always so busy. Waiting for a crisp, almost chilly day was the perfect strategy – we only ran into a couple of dozen people on the 4+ mile trail, and for half of it had the place to ourselves.

Taking the East Bluff trail walks you straight up the bluff and right out to a view over the lake. I love the contrast between the evergreens on the opposite hill and the trees that have already shed their leaves in the valley.

Here, it almost looks like a field of grass, but really it is all the trees that have tucked themselves in for winter, their bare branches striking against the green pine.

It was good to get away – to get out and go and see and do and not sit at a computer or fold laundry.

Have you taken a complete day off in a while? What did you do?

If not, maybe it’s time.