Hike the Ice Age Trail from the comfort of your couch!

     It was another couple of grueling miles before we began our descent into the Wisconsin River Valley. We could hear the mighty Wisconsin well before any glimpses of its shimmering waters

shown through the vegetation. After a hairpin turn at a large rock shaped like a turtle, the IAT traced the riverbank heading upstream, and it was here that the character of the trail changed from

pleasant to… well, just plain absurd. The riparian landscape here is strewn with huge, angular boulders that the intrepid hiker is forced to hop, scale, and stretch across. Northwoods mythology claims

that these are the dice left behind by Paul Bunyan and his titanic cohorts after long nights spent gambling and drinking. Actually, mythology says no such thing, but it ought to.

     There were a couple of places where Susan asked for my hand to scale a steep climb; a couple of other spots where the combined bulk of my pack and my abdomen just barely fit through the tight

squeeze between two slabs of igneous beefcake. For all the difficulty plodding through this ridiculous stretch, the sheer beauty of the area was a joy to behold. Jagged bluffs jut out overlooking the

water, providing stunning vistas of the swift-flowing current as it courses through the Grandfather Falls rapids.

     The beauty, and the drama, ended when the trail headed inland. A half-dozen mosquito bites and several bramble scratches later, the hiking trail gave way to County Highway E to cross the state’s namesake river over a long bridge. I’d been thinking about this milestone for a couple of days: the crossing of the Wisconsin, the James Brown of rivers: hardest-working river in show biz with a couple dozen dams providing hydroelectric power and sustaining the nation’s paper industry. We were right around the 300-mile mark for the summer, having finished probably the toughest 300 we’d encounter. I should have been stoked at this point, but mostly I was just whipped and ready for today’s hike to be over.