The Old Sauk Trail is a great one for rainy/hazy/cloudy/foggy/smoky days like today. We arrived at the north parking lot around 1 PM and there was only one other car in the lot. The trail is in great shape with no obstacles that I could see. The trail is covered by trees for much of the hike so we could not even tell when it was raining. This trail is also known for big trees and at this time of year there is a lot of green everywhere, including the moss found along the trail and hanging from trees.
I have not hiked Old Sauk for a couple of years and today I noticed that the main trail that used to run mostly parallel to the river has been rerouted into the ADA loop for a short distance. When you get to the river viewpoint around 2 miles from the north trail head, follow the sign pointing toward Murphy Creek and you will end up hiking on the ADA loop for a brief distance. From here, you can continue on the main Old Sauk Trail by following the sign to Murphy Creek to your left. The ADA loop continues to the right and the parking area and privy are about .1 miles from this point. For good measure, we hiked the full ADA loop as well, which added about a mile to our hike.
We did not see any animals on our hike, though we did hear loud vocal animal noises coming from the bushes about .5 miles from the Murphy Creek end of the trail so we decided to turn around at that point and return to the north parking lot. We could not identify what was making the sounds but decided to be cautious about it because we had our dog with us. We returned to the parking lot around 4:45 PM and were the only car left. We only saw one other family out hiking so we had the trail to ourselves for most of the 6.5 mile hike.
Comments