Street address: W2348 Short Road, Chilton 53014.
Although there are cross-country skiing and snowshoeing trails in the park, the tower closes when there is a lot of snow.
This Earthcache is in the 105 acre Ledge View Nature Center and Preserve. It is a free Calumet County Park. The Nature Center and Park offer: Nature observations, Displays, Caving, Hiking, Snowshoeing, and Cross-country skiing. The "Ledge" is the local name for the Niagara Escarpment which this park sits on. This Escarpment is made of Silurian Epoch/Era Dolomitic limestone bedrock, an erosion resistant rock.
The posted coordinates take you to the base of a 60 foot tall observation tower. The tower is .22 miles, on improved trail, from the Nature Center. Walk to the top of the tower where you will find an interpretive sign.
The Wisconsin Glacial Episode was the most recent major advance of the North American or Laurentide Ice Sheet complex. The Wisconsin glaciation extended from approximately 85,000 to 11,000 years ago; the maximum ice extent occurred approximately 25,000–21,000 years ago.
One of the features left created by a glacier is a drumlin, from the tower you can see a perfect example of one. A drumlin is a teardrop shaped hill believed to have been formed by the streamlined movement of glacial ice sheets across rock debris, or till. A hole forms in the ice allowing till to fall through, and as the ice continues to move, it pushes against the back edge of the debris and forms the steeper side or Stoss end. As it moves past, the ice drags on the front end, creating a gentle Lee slope. Drumlins usually have layers indicating that material was repeatedly added to the core material. They often occur in drumlin fields of multiple similarly shaped, sized and oriented hills. Many Pleistocene (Wisconsin Glaciation) Epoch/Era drumlin fields are observed to occur in a fan-like distribution.
A drumlin's long axis is parallel with the movement of the ice and it is roughly symmetrical around the long axis. They generally have a consistent ratio of 2: 3.5 width to length dimensions. Drumlins are typically 0.62–1.25 miles long, less than 160 feet high and between 980–1,970 feet wide.
This is an Earthcache so there is no container to find. To log a Found It for this cache you will need to visit the coordinates and email me the answers to the following questions. Please do not write your answers in your log.
1. What image is displayed to symbolize what is happening during our current era - the epoch Anthropocene?
2. From our angle, which side of the drumlin are we looking at, the stoss end or the lee slope?
3. Which direction do you think the ice that formed this drumlin was moving?
4. Why do you think this area is quite a bit higher in elevation than the area a few miles to the west?
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