After viewing Wisconsin’s Natural Bridge and traveling down the road a bit, you can see a different stone structure. The limestone Our Lady of Loretto church closed in 1960 but the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and now used as a museum.
Our Lady of Loretto Museum
Walking on the trails to the waterfalls, one can find wildflowers but sometimes you have to look up for birds or other interesting things, like an old dead tree limb which resembles the backside of a bunny standing up with ears flat out plus a round tail.
Interesting Tree Limb
While the sounds and sights of the waterfalls in Amnicon Falls State Park draws most attention from visitors, other nature’s beauty can be found in the park like the Canada Mayflower growing along the path to Snake Pit Falls.
Canada Mayflower
It may not get as many visitors as the Upper and Lower Falls on the Amnicon River, but the Snake Pit Falls is an interesting and twisting waterfall. The river splits in two as it flows around an island along the Douglas Fault (site of earthquakes that occurred about a half billion years ago), with the Snake Pit Falls on the far side of the island. Several smaller drops occur upstream from Snake Pit Falls, before it drops about 12 feet and then twists at a 90 degree angle and drops another 10 feet through the narrow gorge. I didn’t hike to the bottom of the second drop so the view is from the 90 degree bend after the first drop.
The Twist of the Snake Pit Falls
A short video of the twisting Snake Pit Falls.
Rolled up old barbed wire can be photogenic except when it is at my place since it means I haven’t finished cleaning up the old fences or took care of the “pretty yellow flowers” which are behind the wire. The pretty flowers are considered a highly invasive weed which was brought over to North America in the 1700s. Wild Mustard greens can be eaten and the seeds ground for mustard, but can be poisonous to cattle if they eat too much or favor the milk so it is not sellable. So both the old wire and wild mustard are bad things but together they create a pretty picture.
Old and Yellow
Last evening and this morning, the catbird has been singing up a storm but not the catty mew which which him sound like a cat, but his long song which can last for up to ten minutes as they copy the sounds of other species and stringing them together to make his own song, like his relatives of mockingbirds and thrashers. The Gray Catbird belongs to the genus Dumetella, which means “small thicket” and they can be found in thickets of young trees, dense shrubs and vines.
Cat Sounding Bird
Although some harvesting of hay was happening last week, it is doubtful any hay will be going through the upper hay loft door on this barn since only a small percentage of hay is put up as loose hay anymore and this old barn styles don’t work for the big round bales of hay.
Retired Barn Loft Door
Today is Trinity Sunday in the Western Christian liturgical calendar which celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In various books, including the American Gardening published in 1896, the trillium is often mentioned in connection with Trinity Sunday and the wildflower is also called trinity flower. Nearly all parts of the plant comes in threes. It has 3 broad leaves on each stalk, 3 small green sepals and 3 large white sepals surrounding a group of yellow stamens plus it also has three-sectioned seedpods.
But this year my great white trillium blossoms has already turned pink or dropped their flower petals so only the nodding trilliums were displaying their white flowers yet.
Great White Trillium or Trinity Flower
Upstream from the tallest waterfall in Wisconsin, a smaller or little 30 foot waterfall can be found. But the waters of the Black River puts on a show at the scenic Little Manitou Falls before flowing into the Interfalls Lake and falling 165 feet downstream.
Little Manitou Falls
View a short video of the falls as you listen to the roar of the falling waters.
In short distance, even sometimes just a few feet, the type of wildflowers can change greatly. Just a few miles from my home, a limestone cliff can be found a rural road and at the base of the cliff, a splash of blue caught my eye. Spreading Jacob’s Ladder, a native wildflower of moist shady woodlands, with blue to purple flowers, is also sometimes called Stairway to Heaven, which is fitting since I found it at the base of a cliff and the flower need a lot of stairs or a ladder to get to the top.
Spreading Jacob’s Ladder
