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| Scenic Drive | 4.90 Miles |
200 AEG |
| | Scenic Drive | 4.90 Miles | 5 Hrs | | 0.98 mph |
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| no partners | | Still searching for Autumn's elusive color 
After last week's on-and-off Autumn color search, I again tried to find it, this time along the usually colorful St. Croix River valley. My journey first took me to Osceola, Wis where I had good luck last year. This year, a lot of the most colorful trees, (Maple, Birch, Aspen) were already in the late stages, even having lost most of their leaves.
The 25 foot falls was flowing at a good rate again but the foliage around the base was mostly green yet. We haven't had a hard frost in the area yet and I think that is a large part of the lack of color this year.
Disappointed with Osceola, I headed North and while passing through Dresser, Wis I stopped in at Trollhaugen Ski Resort to visit with my younger brother, Rusty, who maintains the resort complex and keeps adding new stuff to get customers in during the non-winter seasons. Rusty showed me the Obstacle Course that is ending its first successful season. That sure looked like a fun way to spend an afternoon. Got a few tips from Rus so I headed on to St.Croix Falls, Wis and Taylor's Falls, MN.
I parked at the State Park on the MN side and hiked down the well maintained trail system to the river where some cliff climbers were at work trying to scale the slick and vertical rock cliffs. With the nice Autumn weather, they were having way too much fun. The river passes through a narrow rocky gorge with tall scenic cliffs on both sides. A river boat ride is the usual tourist draw but the boats weren't running thanks to our hard working government who thinks it prudent to shut down our country while they squabble like a bunch of brat kids 
Went through Taylors Falls and up the hills to a roadside scenic viewing area that Rus told me about. Almost missed the viewing area because it isn't marked but a quick turn around brought me back. This area provided me with some excellent views of the Wis side of the river which would normally be highly colored at this time of year but........ 
With that trip not providing the results I wanted, I made the turn and headed back to home where I still have plenty of yard work to finish before we make our return trip to Arizona in a couple of weeks 
Fourty MPH winds are expected today so that should knock down a lot of the fragile leaves that are remaining so it's probably a good thing that I did get out at this time as there may not be much left by the weekend  |
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Autumn Foliage Observation Moderate
Not what I was hoping for. |
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| On every trip into the Superstitions, I find another Gold Mine. Today the mine was filled with Memories. I can not wait for the next trip. |
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