Return To Effigy Mounds National Monument

During my archaeological tour of 2014, our group made a brief stop at Effigy Mounds National Monument, about six miles north of Marquette, Iowa.  The only mounds in the park which we saw back then were this group of three near the visitor center, which are shown again in this photo, taken today.

Back then, we couldn't see the other mounds because they could be reached either by a long hike or by a road on which our tour bus couldn't feasibly drive.  Today, I decided to go on that hike, and it began like hikes are supposed to begin.....uphill.  Fortunately, after some huffing and puffing, yours truly was able to reach higher but more level ground, and the first group of mounds, called Little Bear.

Here's another member of the Little Bear mound group.

A branch trail led to an overlook named Fire Point.  To the right of it was a row of roundish mounds.

From Fire Point, I could again see the Mississippi, which in this area is divided into several channels by roughly parallel islands.  I decided to leave part of the tree in the foreground to the left in the picture.

I then returned to the main trail and continued to the Great Bear mound group, which includes the Great Bear mound.  This mound was so large that I could only photograph parts of it, such as seen here.

Here's another shot of (most of) the Great Bear mound.

The trail curved around other mounds within the Great Bear group, including this one, which I could fit into one photo.

I continued on to a pair of overlooks, probably less than 100 feet from each other, named Twin Views.  For the fourth and last time, I got a shot of the Mississippi and some of its islands, this time with several trees in the foreground.

The Twin Views are the farthest places from the visitors centers which I hiked to.  On the way back, I stopped briefly near an open area called Tallgrass Prairie.  You can tell that there's some distance between the mounds and mowed area in the foreground and the trees in the background.

Due to my love for hiking, even though I returned to a place I visited nine years ago, I can still say that this post is not a rehash of that visit.  But for the time being, Bigfoot will allow some time for his big feet to recover.