On Saturday, Dave and I went hiking at Yellowwood State Forest. He had spotted something on the satellite view in Google Earth that looked like an undiscovered pond, so we set out to see if we could find it.

We started on a horse trail, and hiked up a hill. Once on the ridge, we bushwhacked down into a ravine. We saw a creek at the bottom, and worked our way down. Along the way, we saw bare spots where turkeys had made their beds.

We didn’t find a pond, instead, we followed another, very muddy horse trail out to a nice view of the lake.

We turned around and got on another trail … just because we didn’t find the pond didn’t mean we couldn’t hike more.

We climbed a bigger hill on the 10 O’Clock Line Trail, a 14-mile trail that ends in Brown County State Park. Once we reached the top of the hill, we followed some horse trails for a while on some narrow ridges.

We looked through the trees and thought we spotted a pond. Dave got out his binoculars and it was pretty clear there was SOME kind of water down there. We couldn’t tell if it was a wide creek or a small pond, and the ravine was too steep to go down and check.

We got to the bottom and followed the road back to the car, getting some more views of the lake.

Later, we looked at my GPS and realized we had been pretty close to the water we spotted from the top of the ridge. We just turned the wrong way. Next time, we’ll be able to go there and see if there is, in fact, a pond.

It was a fun hike of about three miles, with a couple of good climbs and some great scenery. And it was great to see Dave, I hadn’t hung out with him since before Christmas since he was sick, and we’ve both been busy.

Earlier this week, temperatures rose to around 30 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s wild how warm that feels when you’ve acclimated to temperatures in the teens. The past couple of days we’ve had highs in the 40s, and it looks like it will stay that warm at least through the weekend. We may get some rain Sunday, but hopefully biking conditions should be very good, overall. I’ll be limited to road biking, as the trails will be extremely muddy, but road biking sounds pretty good right about now. May go hiking as well … we shall see. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

I’ve been meaning to write about a hike my wife and I did back on November 28. We hiked the Pate Hollow trail, near Lake Monroe. We had hiked there before, but did not hike the entire trail that time. This time, we hiked the entire 7 miles. The additional 3 miles or so were the best part of the trail with some great views of Lake Monroe. I was really glad we finally hiked the whole thing.

It was a hilly 7 miles. The first half was easier, mostly following ridge tops. But the second half was a lot harder, as the trail descended into ravines and climbed back up the hill on the other side, repeatedly. There were several 250+ foot climbs.

All in all, a great hike. Looking at the photos now, it’s a bit shocking how much the weather and conditions have changed in the past few weeks. Just a few weeks ago, we were hiking in short sleeves!