Sunday, April 18, 2010

Rice Lake & The Chippewa Moraine

My daughter and I had a great hike through the Chippewa Moraine Natural Area (East of New Auburn, WI) on Friday as we headed up to Rice Lake for my Saturday presentations. It was a neat experience and they had a nice visitor center and we learned alot about glacial activity in this area in the past. Interesting that, as part of the Ice Age trail, we noted that we've been to the ends of the Ice Age Trail system(http://www.iceagetrail.org/) and this trail also passes through our hometown of Janesville, WI. Lots of neat things emerging although that area looked to be 4-5 weeks behind us as plants were just breaking ground up there. My daughter is truly a nature girl and as seen below, was easily distracted by acorns, moss, etc. She even waded out in some of the small lakes looking for frogs although the water was ice cold. I hope the day never comes where she doesn't want to explore and get a little dirty! We stayed overnight in a hotel in Rice Lake which is a nice little town. My talks for the Barron County Master Gardeners went well and the crowd of 150 or so was an enthusiastic bunch. I knew I was in Northern WI when a lady was mentioning that the Irish Spring soap she put out to deter deer from nibbling on her tree just caused the local bear to get mad and knock down the tree! The event was at the conference center of Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College which is adjacent to the UW-Barron County campus. I had read of a small Japanese garden on the UWBC campus and we tracked it down during the lunch hour. It was small but quite well done (see pictures at the bottom). Only after my daughter's rock climbing (bottom picture) did we notice the sign reading, "Parents, please keep care of your children in this garden. No climbing on the rocks." She sure thought that was funny.

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