(Sept 26, cont.) A couple of miles from Springhills, I happened upon the Siegenthaler-Kaestner Esker State Nature Preserve. The big esker is visible in the background of this photo, but I did not figure out where it was while standing here, taking this photo. If I had known, I could have asked the cow to move her butt just a little so it would stand out better. Or I could have held the camera higher.
There is a yellow pushpin on the esker itself, which is very visible if you zoom in.
The path to the esker looked inviting. If it had been earlier in the day, I probably would have hidden my bike somewhere and gone for a hike. Not that there was much traffic on the road here. But I had to move on. However, I did make this site the destination of a Sunday afternoon ride two days later. On that outing Myra met me here and we went for a walk to take a look. Having walked the ground, it’s now obvious to me where the esker was in the first photo above. Maybe people who are more familiar with glacial features wouldn’t be so slow to identify it.
I know I could Google it, but I’m going to ask: what’s an esker? I’m assuming that it’s a geological feature.
The closest I’ve come to anything sounding like that is Esicar’s Old Hickory Smokehouse in Cape Girardeau, MO, and they just went out of business after 74 years.
http://management.semo.edu/schfa04/jmbruyette1s/esicars/about.htm
Hi, Ken. I sometimes think of it as an upside down river, through that isn’t quite right. It’s the gravel bed from an old river that ran in a tunnel inside a glacier. When the glacier melted, the gravel was left behind and formed a ridge with river-like twists and turns. You can go walking along the top of this one, which an information brochure said is the biggest/best-preserved one in Ohio.
I think the glaciers didn’t go quite as far south as Cape Girardeau, which is probably just as well considering the confusion that could have been created by eskers and Esicar’s.
Say, Ken, do you know if the Esicars trace their family name to Ireland? If so, maybe there is a pretty direct connection to the word esker.
Nationmaster – Encyclopedia – Esker
That’s cool. Geology was my favorite topic in high school, but I don’t recall ever hearing about eskers. I had dinner with my old geology teacher when I was home last month and we talked about doing the KATY Trail next spring. I’ll ask him why he skipped that from the course when I see him.
All I know about Esicar’s is that it was down the hill from us and that my dad always thought their country ham was too dry, so we never bought from them.
I don’t know where they originated. That area is pretty heavily settled by Germans. (You couldn’t tell that from the Steinhoff, could you?)
I was confused when I was a kid because you’d hear someone called a Dutchman in a somewhat bemused or affectionate tone. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I deduced that was a corruption of Deutsch man or man of Germany.