Interstate Park, Wisconsin

A "fine" pothole
We’ve joined up with the Balza’s at Interstate Park on the St. Croix river just inside the Wisconsin border. Tony, Grace, Bob, Cindy, Colleen and Laura are here for an extended weekend. On Saturday, we joined the naturalist for 2 short hikes. This area has two unique features – both created from melting glaciers from about 10,000 years ago. The first is the Dalles of St. Croix. The rock here is basalt from old magma, filled with cracks. A huge lake formed north of here (near what is now Lake Superior) as the glaciers melted. When they broke through the ice dam, the water rammed down this valley, carving away the rock as it came through. Its natural flow was to crash through the rocks along the cracks in the rocks forming the Dalles.
The other key feature is the potholes, also formed from the melting glaciers. The river that formed here was over 2 miles wide and it picked up stones, which starting forming these holes, grinding away the rock (the hardest rock found in Wisconsin) to create these potholes. The naturalist pointed out that while on the Minnesota side were the deepest and widest potholes, Wisconsin had the ‘finest’ example of a pothole.

We enjoyed the weekend, catching up with each other and hiking the various trails. Bob and I also took the canoe up the river into the Dalles, and down the river a ways. We had fun though trying to get back up river through the small rapids, twice the water current turned the canoe around. We finally made it through a narrow channel along the side of the riverbank.