The Effigy Mounds

Ever since I learned about the Effigy Mounds in elementary school, I've been interested in seeing them in person. Since many are located in other countries and on other continents, it's kind of nice that the Woodland Indians left a few behind for those of us landlocked dwellers to visit. According to the signage in the museum, originally more than 10,000 such mounds stretched across the Midwest. Due to farming and deforestation, there are about 1,000 remaining.

Buck took this picture of a picture in the museum. We hoped to hike down to this part of the park, but we forgot all of our supplies--like food, water, bug spray, snacks, etc. However, once upon a time, researchers did a limestone chalk outline of the mounds, then flew a plane overhead to take the picture you see. It's amazing to me that native people could figure out how to build consistent shapes like these from ground level. Maybe they climbed the nearby trees to help? Anyway, we still sort of got to see what we missed by looking at the picture--much like you are doing right now :) And we can always go back, right?






We were told that the next couple of weeks is their very busiest time of the year, because all these trees turn the shades of autumn and visitors flock to see the woods, wander the paths, and weave their way through the mounds.





Here's Buck taking a picture of the Mississippi River and here's the picture he took! Wow, formatting is amazing (and there's not much of it on this blogger program, let me tell you!!)









Graysen discovered the Great Bear Mound--there was a Little Bear Mound too (I think that's what it was called). We would have gone back for a picture of Buck by this and G by that, but after hiking up and down that big old hill to see the Mississippi, my knee was feeling just a smidge weird again. However, it was so worth the hike. The forest was beautiful, and the mounds just well enough maintained that you could see where they were and tell what they were. We didn't end up seeing any of the bird shapes but all the others we were able to check off our *saw 'em* list.





Brennen again! This place had a fun hike, but as you see it wore our dog out, water break!

Graysen and I did Junior Ranger activity booklets to get badges; the badges were cool because they were made out of wood. The girls didn't want to do the Junior Ranger activities (don't they want awesome badges too?)

We learned that Indians, tools, weapons, and other things were buried in the Effigy mounds.

[Mom addendum: the ranger lady at this station was super nice! She said that kids of all ages like to do the Jr. Ranger program booklets--she's even had a 90 year old fill one out! There were several rangers stationed at the Effigy Mounds, actually, all fairly young. One woman was expecting a baby--yes, park ranger wear comes in maternity sizes :) I asked Graysen while we were walking what he thought about becoming a park ranger one day. There are so many benefits, like going to new places, finding out neat history, getting to be outdoors, working with animals in their habitats . . . He's like, "Yeah, that's all great, but I don't like learning about nature." Okay. Well, hmmm. :)]





It was a really cool place, lots of cool information, and who doesn't like a good hike? This is Brennen signing off!