Black Diamond Mines: Stewartville Trail

March, 2017

The day before spring started, we decided to make a return visit to Black Diamond Mines in Antioch for a second hike (see the first here). Our reasoning for this was twofold: one, it was spring and therefore the hills are green and it would not be baking hot out there. Two, they had in plentiful stock, the 2017 Trails Challenge T-shirts and all four of us secretly wanted one.

Black Diamond Mines is a huge park and it’s possible to spend a short amount of time or a long amount. I can’t recommend going in the winter and spring months enough because the summers are brutally hot, but also the hills really are that much more spectacular when green.

Because we had already done the shorter path to the mines and up to Rosehill Cemetery, this time we decided to be brave and go up the Stewartville Trail, which is the first left after starting up from the main parking lot and staging area. You’ll go up a long, vertical hillside path, which will produce unpleasant whining from your five year old. You’ll pass through a cattle gate and you’ll avoid varying sizes of cow pies. You can take your dog off leash here, by the way, but you have to have strict voice control over it. This includes, “No! Stop rolling in poop this instant!” And your dog will look at you and suggest that it wasn’t going to do that, and that you’re overreacting.

Your children will continue to complain, and begin mentioning they have a terrible ear ache that somehow only began on the trail, and not even the summit will make them happy, but it WILL take your breath away. Here, you overlook a verdant valley with more trails all of which lead down to Stewartville River.

We chose to loop back and around on the Carbondale Trail, which was lovely. This brought our walk to a pleasing 3 miles total. Pleasing for me. Not pleasing for the whining children. But they eventually came around.

Somewhere along the flat Carbondale Trail, the 5 year old noticed that our dog Fergus had managed to sneak in a hearty roll in poop anyway. Now he had a green smear on it on his collar.

Beware the cow pies from these nice cows lounging under trees!

Somewhere further along the trail, we noticed that Ken had a similar smear of green on his bare leg (he was wearing shorts, not trusting the early spring weather to pull a fast one on us and turn blazing summer hot), just at dog-collar-height. Fergus had wiped himself along Ken’s leg. Jerk.

There wasn’t anything Ken could do about this, so we kept walking. I looked back and noticed him throwing dirt on his leg in an attempt to soak it up? IDK. It didn’t work.

Then I looked back and saw him with a clump of grass trying to wipe it off, casual-like.

I started laughing. “You poor thing,” I said.

Ken was cool about the poo on his leg, and it was sort of cute that he was still madly trying to get it off.

“Don’t you have any wipes or anything in your backpack?” he asked me.

I started laughing harder. So hard, in fact, that I peed a little.

“Yes, I do,” I said through my laughter and knee-clenching. I had just remembered I had alcohol wipes in my backpack.