Today’s hike of the Valley View Segment of the Ice Age Trail didn’t go exactly as expected.

My plan was to drop my bicycle off at the southern end of the segment where the trail emerged onto Mill Town Road, then drive to the trailhead on Timber Lane a few miles northwest, where I would park the van. After walking the 2.3 miles to Mill Town Road, I’d get on my bike and cycle back to Timber Lane, rack up my bike on the back of the van and go home. So simple!

The first part came off without a hitch. I easily found the end of the trail on Mill Town Road, locked my bike up to a conveniently-located sign post, and drove to the trailhead on Timber Lane. The trailhead is clearly marked and well cared-for but I somehow managed to drive right past it without seeing it. When I realized I had missed it I was about a quarter-mile down the road. A quick three-point-turn took care of that and I was on the trail about five minutes later.

The trail meanders through the wooded verges of residential lots on which were built the most magnificently dull, boring monster houses I’ve ever seen. I think the designers / builders were going for “mansion” but every one of the monster houses I saw had the same beige or ash gray vinyl siding you would see on a typical ranch home built in any residential neighborhood this century. Their defining characteristic was that they were all extremely large, two or three times larger than the McMansions that have sprung up in suburbia in the last twenty years, but unlike a real mansion on a large estate, the enormous size of these houses only called attention to the fact they were all extremely boring, just enormous boxes with windows large enough to fly a plane through.

Okay. I didn’t come here to look at gigantic boring houses. But when they’re in view, they kind of dominate the scene. Given all that, I felt adding a comment about their incongruous size and unimaginative design was appropriate.

Fortunately, there are no monster houses in easy view of the Valley View Preserve. The mature oaks and other trees growing along the edges of the preserve almost completely block them from view.

I hadn’t planned to spend much time in the Valley View Preserve because I didn’t know what to expect. I thought I would just cut across the northern edge of the preserve on the IAT and continue onward along the trail. By the time I got to the first intersection with one of the trails that loops around the preserve, though, I decided to spend a little more of the copious free time I had to get a better look at it.

I picked a route along the trails in the preserve to take me on a loop around the preserve along the edges of the fields of prairie grass and through the oak savannas. The trails were well laid-out to give me a good look at the 109-acre preserve. When I was in the prairie meadows, I could just see over the top of the grass.

Just as I was turning onto the trail to leave the preserve, the thought struck me that the keys in my pocket were not chafing my leg they way a big wad of keys usually will. I gave them a pat with my left hand to make sure they were still there and noticed that it was not a big wad of keys but instead was what seemed like just a key fob and my car key. Frantically digging them out of my pocket, I confirmed that the key ring with my house key and, critically, the key to unlock my bike had somehow fallen off the ring!

There was no sense in going on to Mill Road if I couldn’t ride my bike back to Timber Lane where my van was parked. Instead, I backtracked to the preserve, then found the trail that would return me to the van, eventually backtracking over the same terrain I had covered on the way to the preserve. When I got to my car, I walked back and forth between the trailhead and the car, scanning the ground for keys. I felt sure that if I dropped them anywhere, this was the most likely place but, if they were there, I couldn’t find them. Eventually, I drove ten minutes to a hardware store in Verona to buy bolt cutters so I could free my bike from the sign post it was secured to. Fittingly, the bolt cutters cost ten dollars less than the cheap bike lock.

Today’s hike: 3.7 miles out and back in 1 hour 33 minutes.