Referring often to our Tim Ernst maps, we hiked along Old Military Road which winds along an embankment, but time and the elements have worn the road down many feet in some places. The embankment is made of "loess", a geologically recent deposit of silt or material which is usually yellowish or brown in color and consisting of tiny mineral particles brought by wind to the places where they now lie. It is a product of past glacial activity in an area. It is a sedimentary deposit of mineral particles which are finer than sand but coarser than dust or clay, deposited by the wind. Loess is a type of silt which forms fertile topsoil in some parts of the world. Loess deposits are usually a few meters thick. One of the key characteristics of these deposits is the ‘cat steps'. The soil has few clay particles to hold it together. It is composed mainly of quartz crystals which slide easily against each other, and is therefore very subject to erosion. Because of this, there are mini-earth slides, which form the steps.