Sugar Loaf Bluff

Offspring #2 came down for the day. We went out to eat and walked around the historic downtown district admiring the architecture. We walked down to the river to see the flooding. Then we drove up to sugar loaf bluff which you can see at the top of this picture. This picture was taken at a antique store at the bottom of the bluff.

This bluff is made of limestone and stands 500 feet above the city. The water you see down there is a lake but it used to be a channel in the Mississippi. Basically the town of Winona sits on a sand bar in the middle of the river. This bluff was mined to look this way. Originally it was a half cone shape. The rock was used for sidewalks and buildings in town. Mining the rock ended in the 1880's. The walk up from the street takes about half an hour. Most of the trail is shaded in the woods. The trail near the top gets sandy and is exposed to the sun. 

This view shows Winona State University just above the lake on the left. The winter in 2004 was unusually wet. In March tons of limestone detached from the bluff and fell down through the forest and stopped about 100 years short of the nearest house.