By 1:30 pm I was done walking the Pine Road loop and I still wasn’t ready to head home, so I went for a hat trick — three hikes in one day. According to my guidebook, there was a nearby hike on the IAT I could walk as a loop, so I headed south to Cross Plains.

There are many pieces to the Cross Plains segment and I hope to eventually hike them all, but until now I’ve only walked the trails that wind through the woods about three miles to the southeast of Cross Plains — in fact, I’ve hiked there twice, first on March 31st, 2024, to walk the trail through the National Park Service Cross Plains Interpretive Site as a loop, and again on February 2nd, 2025, to walk the trail through the Ice Age Reserve Wildlife Area as an out-and-back hike.

Today, I decided to wander the trails through the Andersen Preserve north of Cross Plains. The trailhead I picked for the start of my hike was in a residential neighborhood in the northern part of the village of Cross Plains. There’s no parking lot, just an open grassy lot between two houses with a map & information kiosk, so I parked along the curb in the shade of a tree to keep my car cool while I was away.

The trail climbs very steeply the first hundred yards so so up the side of a stony hill. It would be a very difficult climb if the IAT hadn’t built frequent switchbacks from side to side up the slope of the hill. Even so, I was glad I brought my trekking poles, and I stopped for a moment to catch my breath after I made it to the top of the steepest climb. There’s still a bit more climbing to do here and there after that, but it’s all moderately easy from then on.

After the switchbacks, the trail heads north to run along the thickly-wooded crest of the hill. The trail is wide, well cared-for, and easy to walk. About a mile along, the trail emerges from the forest to cross a meadow planted with prairie grass. There is a shortcut about a hundred feet or so from the edge of the forest, in case you want to shorten the hike. I didn’t, so I went on to follow the trail where it ducked back into the forest on the other side of the meadow.

The forest on the northern edge of the preserve is maybe just a little bit thinner but no less pleasantly relaxing as the woods I went through at the start of my hike. I took a short detour to get a look at a designated camping area (the little spur at the top left of the screen shot below) set up for through-hikers. Immediately after that, the trail exited the woods onto the meadow to cut the long way across it, turning south at the short cut to plunge back into the woods.

The descent to the trailhead was quite steep. If I had started my hike here, I probably would’ve been gasping for breath by the time I reached the meadow. The trailhead was at the end of a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood. I had to take a short walk along the village streets to get back to my van. My map app told me I hiked a total of 2.8 miles over one hour and six minutes, not bad considering how close together some of the contour lines were.