After checking out the wooden canoe festival, I ate lunch a couple blocks down the street at the Round Man Brewing Company, then drove about a half-hour south of Spooner to hike to the Blue Hills Felsenmeer.

While I was helping cut trail at the Ice Age Trail event last week in the Blue Hills, I kept hearing about the local landmarks that everyone said were not to be missed. The ones that kept coming up were Gundy’s Canyon and the two or three felsenmeers nearby. I had never heard of a “felsenmeer” before, and when I asked what it was, the responses I got all seemed to boil down to, “it’s a bunch of rocks.” But it’s an IMPRESSIVELY LARGE bunch of rocks.

The Blue Hills Felsenmeer is a long way back in the woods. I had to hike about two miles along a two-track dirt road which hadn’t seen any wheeled traffic in weeks, and I didn’t see any sign that other hikers had been this way since the last rain, ten days before. I had the trail all to myself as I picked my way through the woods. It was a beautifully sunny day for a hike, although I could have done with a little less sun or a little less humidity. Two miles of tramping through the woods left me dripping sweat.

I had the felsenmeer all to myself as well, and for once I wished there’d been at least one or two people picking their way across the rocks to give it some scale. There are indeed an impressive number of rocks in the photos I took, but I absolutely failed to capture the size of the thing. From the lip of the canyon to the bottom was a drop of about 75 feet. I climbed about halfway down the side of the canyon on loose rocks to get a few panoramic shots of as much of it as I could. I bet it stretches at least 1,000 feet from one end of the canyon to the other.

(Here’s a pretty good drone video that gives you a better idea of the size of the felsenmeer.)

After a snack and a few swigs of water, I hiked back to my car, where the comfort of air conditining awaited me.