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Blueberry Hill LbNA #66969

Owner:Adoptable
Plant date:May 25, 2014
Location: Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center
City:Gunflint Trail
County:Cook
State:Minnesota
Boxes:1
Planted by:ChikWaukMuseum
Found by: Northern Flannel Moon
Last found:Sep 18, 2014
Status:F
Last edited:Sep 23, 2015
1. Walk down the road, away from the museum to Amikwiish Way. Go left; pass the beaver lodge, pass Tamarack Alley. You are walking on what was once a narrow cabin road.

2. Stop at the top of the rise and have a look at a photo of Chik-Wauk when it was a busy resort. See if you can spot the loon’s nest platform floating off the shore opposite the museum.

3. Continue on to the boardwalk. Notice charred trees from the Ham Lake Fire in 2007. On the large rock to your left there is a type of lichen called rock tripe. This lichen was used as a survival food long ago. You can get an even better view of the loon nest if you stop at the picnic table just before you angle to the right onto the Big Sag Trail.

4. Go on the Big Sag Trail for a short way until you see the Blueberry Hill sign and follow that trail straight ahead. Look for bluebead lily which has a yellow flower in the spring and blue berries in the summer, but do not eat them! They are poisonous.

5. Walk past several very tall old aspen on both sides and a brush pile on the left, which is good habitat for small animals.

6. Go through an area of young aspen, past fallen balsam trees; look at all those branches! Look for moose tracks in the trail if it’s muddy.

7. Look for the woodpecker holes on a dead aspen on the left that were probably made by a pileated woodpecker.

8. Pass through a brushy area that has wild roses and lots of hazelnut bushes. Continue on up a slope with blueberry plants on both sides.

9. Follow the trail back down through lots of burnt balsam trees. Now you can tell why this trail has its name! Walk across a bare piece of granite bedrock and you’ll see a standing dead tree with a blue sign “Blaze Tree” on it. A blaze is a hatchet mark on both sides of a tree that woodsmen used to mark trails.

10. Continue halfway up the hill. There are many young jack pine trees. On the left there is a nice red or Norway pine tree about four feet tall. Look behind it in the brush pile under some long fallen trees.

11. CONGRATULATIONS YOU FOUND IT! Stamp the journal page and add your name (or nickname) and date. Stamp your own journal if you have one. Please put everything back in the letterbox and close the ziploc bag and hide it back in the same place. We hope this was a fun adventure for you.