8 June

We made it to the Blufftrails up at the end of Cty. FA around 1:30 in the afternoon.  It is now lush and green in and around all the trails to the point where many narrow patches are overgrown by blowing prairie grass and even, thankfully, only small bunches of thistle.  We assembled the front wheels of our bikes, tested the brakes, and headed up to the end of the gravel turnaround, past two guarding boulders and off into the thick foliage.  Julia had never been on a mountain bike trail before, so she learned quickly that what most of the time seems like fairly free and easy riding on sidewalks or roadsides, now has to be paid close attention to.  We came up to the rim of the quarry, a golden green crater now, full of native trees, but as they are grown up in and around or against the back drop of rock, it has more of a look of a mountain than the soft rolling bluff lands many are used to.  The field trail winds around the rim, past an out cropping of limestone here and there, then lowering at a mild angle down into the flat land of the quarry.

The trail finally merges with an old well worn mining gravel road so that the riding becomes second nature again, the only thing to concern yourself is an occasional patch of overly loose gravel.  This trail leads along a plateau for a considerable distance, opening here and there to old loose rock platforms – vestiges of mining residue in one form or another.  Small, ramshackle buildings with tattered roofs and tilted dead equipment inside are scattered as if part of the outskirts of a western ghost town.  The trail turns from split gravel to concrete, which widens oddly as to an extended parking lot.  We reach an old set of gates surrounded by a rusted wire fence.  This is the point where the trail begins to lead downhill, about as a narrow as a truck lane, and onto Cty. B.  As you reach the end and consider the distance of the road and the variety of old structures along the way, it dawns on you just how significant this quarry had been, how many people must have run it at any given time, how well hidden it is, but at the same time conveniently located off highway 16.  Signs now claim 'preserved forever.'

On our way back we passed only two or three groups of people walking along the wide trail.  At one point, we biked past a young woman who I recognized as an ex-student of mine who I had, ironically, helped to get a summer job some years back with the Mississippi Valley Conservancy.  Her first task that summer was to walk and plot markers for an eventual map of the quarry trails here up at the top of the bluff.  She must have liked the place.