Blue Mounds drew me for its 210.34 km of isolation, not for a demanding climb. The visit became a short circuit of a nearly level summit, two observation towers, wide Driftless views and a $5 lesson in interpreting a silent park entrance.
My main reason for driving to Blue Mounds was isolation. The peak record I was working from gave it 210.34 km, which was enough to make a modest Wisconsin hill interesting to me. I had spare time, some energy and a car, so I drove over.
Blue Mound State Park was almost the opposite of a rough mountain outing. I found a very well-maintained park with picnic areas, mown grass, paved paths and mature trees. Wisconsin DNR describes the park as sitting atop the highest point in southern Wisconsin, but at summit level the word highest does not translate into anything visually dramatic.
The summit area looked almost completely flat to me: a broad grassy field crossed by park paths, with no obvious natural bump announcing where the high point should be.
The grassy summit felt roughly the size of a couple of football fields. I went to the point that matched my map and Peakbagger, then roamed around a little more because the ground itself offered almost no help. That was essentially the summit ceremony.
The broad top is more interesting geologically than it first appears. Wisconsin DNR explains that resistant Niagara dolomite survives here as a cap above softer surrounding rocks that were worn down by long erosion. Blue Mound also lies in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin, a region bypassed by the continental glaciers that reshaped much of the surrounding Midwest. The result is a hill that stands clearly above the countryside even though its actual summit surface can look almost absurdly level.
The only real complication of the visit was administrative. When I approached the entrance, the gates were open. A woman at the office looked at me but said nothing. I said hello, interpreted the silence as permission to continue, and drove in.
Later I stopped at a viewpoint and left the car unattended for about three minutes. When I came back, there was a ticket on the window. I still do not know where the ranger had been hiding, but the response time was impressive.
My first concern was the rental company. I imagined the ticket making its way back to them, followed by another half a hundred dollars in administrative fees for the privilege of having my mistake processed. Fortunately, the notice gave me a simpler option. On my visit, the daily admission I had missed was $10, and I could return to the entrance and pay it with an additional $5 charge for the ranger's rapid fieldwork.
So I did. I also asked what I had misunderstood on arrival. Apparently the sculpture-like frozen look at the gate did not mean, "carry on". It meant that a visitor without an annual pass should stop, park and come back to the office to buy daily admission. My interpretation had been more imaginative than accurate.
The summit itself did not provide much drama, but the observation towers did. Wisconsin DNR notes that the park has two of them, and I visited both. A landmark locator on one deck helped turn the broad horizon into something more readable instead of just an expanse of green countryside.
The towers sit within the park-like summit area rather than on a sharp crest. I thought one gave slightly better views than the other, but both were more rewarding than trying to identify an invisible high point in the grass.
From above the trees, the reason for being here became easier to appreciate. Forest, farmland and low ridges stretch away across southern Wisconsin, with the eroded hills and valleys of the Driftless landscape giving the view far more shape than the summit lawn suggests.
For a conventional summit experience, Blue Mounds is almost comically uneventful: arrive at a polished state park, locate the correct patch of grass, wander around because the ground gives no useful clues, and the climbing part is basically finished. For me, though, the isolation number was the point. The towers supplied the views, and the ticket supplied the day's small reminder that silent eye contact at a park entrance is not, apparently, a recognized form of vehicle admission.
