If the past pandemic year has done anything for me, it has cemented my enjoyment of hiking. With all our efforts to avoid crowds and properly socially distance ourselves from others, my girlfriend and I have spent many hours, and enjoyed many miles, in various green spaces of Wisconsin during the past year.
Usually, we go out for one park, maybe two in a day, and try to get 4-10 miles. On a recent weekend, though, we made an effort to visit FIVE local properties in one day, checking to see if these would be places suitable for hiking with kids. We also made it a point to visit sites that were part of the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, an organization dedicated to preserving green spaces in Ozaukee and Washington Counties. Four of the five spaces we visited were OWLT properties.
The mission of the OWLT is “Preserving the water resources, natural areas, and working lands of Ozaukee and Washington Counties.” They seek to “promote public awareness of the benefits of land preservation, and provide opportunities for nature-based recreation, improving the quality of life in our communities.”
Naomi and I started our adventure-day with getting up to see the sunrise in Port Washington. Interestingly, there is a dedicated group of sunrise photographers in Port. Every morning, you’re sure to see a handful of photographers out there, watching the sun appear over Lake Michigan. After that early start and a good breakfast, we hit the road, having plotted out how we could visit 5 parks in one day and were eager to see if we could pull it off!
1. We started at Huiras Lake. This was a neat property with a barn ruin, prairie trails, and a lake. There is a broad hillside here, too, that I’m thinking will be good for some night-sky photography!
2. Next we visited our only non-OWLT property of the day, the Ozaukee County Parks’, Hawthorn Hills Park. We walked on the Shady Lane Natural Area Trail. This park, Naomi and I had visited last summer, but hadn’t gotten to hike, as it was wayyyy too buggy on our previous visit. Today, though was perfect for a 2-mile-ish hike through the woods and along the Milwaukee River! One activity that Naomi and I enjoy a lot is tree-walking, and there were plenty of downed trees for us to walk on here!
3. Our third stop was the Cedarburg Environmental Study Area. This location was mainly wetlands and some evergreen woods. With the variety of landscape types, I can see why this location is a good one for school-trips!
4. All the properties were neat in their own unique ways, but the Donges Bay Gorge property was the most dramatic and surprising. Looking at the map, we anticipated a short trail and nice view of Lake Michigan. What we did >not< expect was the “magical-ness” of the woods, the various gorge-“tributaries” leading into the main gorge, and the height of the bluff we’d be on, providing a dramatic lookout over the Great Lake! This site was formally a home-property, and there still remains an old pool-house there! We are most certainly planning to go back and re-visit this location…while also hoping that not too many other people “discover” this property…
5. Our last stop of the day was Bratt Woods. This property was neat because it was bordered on one side by the Milwaukee River, and on another side by the Ozaukee Interurban Trail – a multi-use trail that goes for 30 miles through many of the northern metro-Milwaukee communities. This property is small, but has a lot of scenic river frontage and is good for bird-watching, too!
We did it! We managed to visit all five properties…though we accumulated less than 7 miles of hiking in total. All the OWLT properties each had around a 1-1.5 miles of hiking – so very suitable for families with young hikers who can’t go long distances yet. It was really neat to see what a variety of great outdoor spaces we had that were easy to get to and demonstrated the diversity of environments in the area.
If you haven’t yet, take a look at the OWLT properties and see how many YOU can visit – and consider supporting their organization, too – they do GOOD WORK. And if you want to get your hands dirty, they always need volunteers!
Find OWLT on social media here… Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.