The smoke and heat in The Wisconsin Dells

We made the 35-mile trip from Madison through central Wisconsin to our next campground. That's 35 miles through dairy land and right past the Headquarters of the Culver's burger and ice cream franchise. We were in the middle of cheese country! We had been snacking on cheese curds and string cheese from local shops since we hit the Wisconsin border!

We stayed at Double K-D campground, a family-owned place that doesn't have many rules and no one to greet you and lead you to your site when you arrive. When we finally got settled into a camp site, we couldn't wait to turn the air-conditioner on. Wisconsin was welcoming us with an unusually hot stretch of days, and this was another weather-aware-heat-wave day. 

Between the humidity and the heat, we spent more time than usual inside with the AC on. We ventured out after we fixed dinner, and explored Mirror Lake State Park. While the pictures on the web site showed a clear lake that mirrors the trees around it, we instead found a green algae bloom that didn't tempt us to get out our kayak.

Wisconsin State Parks charge vehicles with out-of-state license plates $16 for a one-day parking pass. Since we plan to visit several state parks, we invested in the $50 out-of-state annual parking pass as we drove into our first park. Because we couldn't kayak and because the heat was oppressive, the ranger suggested a short, flat hike in the shade to Echo Rock. So we parked and headed into the forest.

It was a one-mile hike to the big rock overlooking the water's edge. Of course, we had to climb to the top of Echo Rock.

We could see commotion through the trees, and realized that we were very close to the Ishnala Supper Club--in business here since 1953.

We had just eaten dinner, and we didn't have reservations, but we were curious what a Wisconsin Supper Club looked like.

The supper club was named for the Ishnala tribe from this area. Several teepees and other Native American art pieces decorated the outdoor area.

The big parking lot was full, and guests were dressed nicely. The billboard at the parking lot pictured some pretty fancy entree options. Supper clubs serve things like North Atlantic Salmon, 24-ounce Ribeye, Prime Rib, Butterflied Prawns, Lobster Tails, or a Filet Mignon. We couldn't help but notice that no prices were included on that billboard. When we looked it up, we found those entrees ranged in price from $55 to $80. We were glad that we weren't hungry!

Another sign reminded customers that they would have a good time, because Ishnala was the state's best Supper Club, and was voted Wisconsin's "best destination restaurant" every year from 2016 to the present. Because we were getting all our information from signs around the property, we should also point out that another one said they have served 42,004 "old fashioneds" this season. Wow! That's a lot of alcohol! We peeked inside, to see what the interior of a Wisconsin Supper Club looked like.

It was too warm for anyone to enjoy the patio seating, but the lake here didn't have the green algae that we saw earlier.

After checking out the supper club, we took a different trail back to the car. It was longer and less flat, and we were both sweating profusely by the time we got finished with our 2.7-mile hike this day.

We assumed that it would cool off this evening, but we had also heard that the smoke from the Canada and Minnesota wild fires was on its way to Wisconsin. They predicted it would reach us at 8:00 this evening, and their estimate was spot on. As we drove into the town of The Wisconsin Dells, we were engulfed by the edge of the smoke.  The sun was low in the sky when we got there, and the smoke had turned it into a neon orange orb.

We were also engulfed by the tourist mecca of The Wisconsin Dells. There were miniature golf courses on steroids, Ripley's Believe-it-or-not museum, escape rooms, and fudge shops by the dozens. Their main claim to fame, however, is that they have the most water parks in the world. It's a summer vacation hot spot for families! We hadn't planned to spend much time in The Wisconsin Dells, but we wanted to see it for ourselves.

We drove into town this evening to see the live entertainment on Elm Plaza. This touristy town hosts live music every evening from 7-9, and we were treated to a performance by "The Swing Crew."

Denisa was perfectly content to relax in her adirondack chair and listem to the music. But Mark "volunteered" her to play the maracas during the next number. It turned out to be the longest song ever performed on the Elm Plaza--at least that's what Denisa thought.

We stayed until their last favorite song, and then made the 15-mile trip back to our campground. We weren't excited about the heat or the smoke, but we were still having a good time near The Wisconsin Dells!

Madison - a badger kind of city

After crossing the Mississippi River, we were in the fourth state of this trip--Wisconsin. We were staying in Madison, the capitol of Wisconsin. So of course we took a state capitol building tour. But first we had to get an understanding of our new home-town and the lay of the land. We were staying at the Mendota County Campground, right on the shores of Lake Mendota. This was our view from the campground towards this big lake in the middle of the city.

The city of Madison has five lakes, and Mendota is the largest.

The shoreline of our lake was 22 miles around, and it had lots of interesting things on those shores. On the hottest day of the summer, we left early to go for a hike. It was already getting warm when we started our walk to Picnic Point. It's a one-mile walk on a peninsula that juts into Lake Mendota. We had water on both sides of the trail at times.  When we looked on one side, we were looking towards our campground.

When we looked on the other side of the trail, we could see downtown Madison and the dome of the Wisconsin state capitol.

One of the things we really liked about Madison was the wonderful water and green spaces that show up in the middle of the city. While we were hiking in Madison, it felt like we were on a trail in the middle of a forest.

We even had some lovely flowers on the trail this morning.

Just a few miles away was the main campus of the University of Wisconsin. Still on Lake Mendota, we found a Wisconsin Badger on the water front.

We enjoy touring college campuses, and we thought that the students here have one of the coolest student unions. The colorful terrace dining area literally spills onto the lake.

The Memorial Student Union looks like a fine old European building, with vines creeping to the top of the balcony. What a fun place to study and eat an "Angry Badger" sandwich for lunch and look out over the lake!

We came across our second badger of the day on the campus beside Lake Mendota.

We took a drive to the University Arboretum, and again we felt like we were in the middle of a forest instead of a state capitol city.

The capitol building was in the middle of the city. Literally all roads lead to the capitol, with eight roads coming together at capitol square. We got our first view of the building as we drove up one of those streets.

With all the trees and traffic it's hard to take a good picture of the state capitol.

After parking the car and walking, it was good to get inside. As we looked up to the dome, we were glad to have an air-conditioned spot to spend part of this summer afternoon. Our tour guide told us that this is the largest state capitol dome by volume. She also pointed out that you could put a lot of Wisconsin cheese curds inside that dome!

The middle rotunda is surrounded by four idential wings that radiate from the center.

We headed down one of those wings to see the state Supreme Court. We also got educated about the justices--six of the seven Wisconsin supreme court justices were females.

Our guide pointed out that every major door had the same animal over it. From this distance, we both agreed that it looked like a toad.

When we got closer, we were relieved to see that it was actually another Wisconsin badger. It's a badger kind of city!

Our guide unlocked the door to the state senate. It was a big round room filled with natural light coming from an overhead glass dome. Our dramatic tour guide told us the story of the paintings at the front of the room. It's far too long to recount in a single blog, and no badgers were mentioned.

Our last stop was the state assembly room, lighted with another massive stained glass sky light. 

This capitol was finished in 1917, with the advent of electricity. This room had the world's first electric voting system. Each desk had a green button to vote "aye" or red button to vote "nay."

As soon as the vote is cast, a red or green dot shows up beside the name of each member of the assembly. It was the latest technology in 1917, and it is still in use today.

After our 50-minute indoor tour, our guide told us how to climb to the observation deck. We climbed the stairs to the top of the capitol to get to the little overlook room high in the dome. When we looked down to the ground floor in the rotunda, we saw that they were setting up chairs for a wedding at the capitol this evening.

We went through the door to the outside viewing deck for a 360-degree walk-around view of Madison. This is one of only two state capitols built on an isthmus. Yes, we had to look up that word because it's not in our day-to-day vocabulary. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land bordered by water on both sides, connecting two larger landmasses. One of those bodies of water was Mendota Lake, and we could see it in the distance.

On the other side of the observation deck we could look down on the second body of water--Lake Monona. While people on the street can't even see these larger-than-life statues, we had a close-up view.

After a hot day in Madison, our last stop was a local grocery store.  Wisconsin is famous for its dairy products, and we wanted to stock up on local snacks. You know you are in Wisconsin when a little grocery store has a full aisle of cheese! Maybe we should change the blog title to "Madison--a badger and cheese kind of city."

How would you pronounce Maquoketa?

How would you pronounce Maquoketa? Yesterday, we had a local at the Dutch windmill ask it we were going to the prettiest place in Iowa. We didn't recognize the name of the park he said, but he assured us we shouldn't miss it. It wasn't until later that we realized that the M-word he said was actually where we had reservations for the next night. We obviously didn't know how to pronounce Maquoketa, and we also didn't recognize it when someone else pronounced it correctly!

Likewise, the ranger at the President Hoover Historical Site mentioned the beauty of a nearby state park. When I used my incorrect pronunciation of Maquoketa, she didn't even realize we were talking about the same place. So we arrived at Maquoketa Caves State Park with no clue how to actually say the word out loud. So for the rest of the blog (and the rest of our lives) we decided to call it M-Caves State Park to save ourselves the embarrassment.

We knew we were going to like it here as soon as we drove into the campground lined with tall pine trees.

The M-Caves state park ranger told us earlier on the phone that their trails were very busy on the weekends. So we purposefully waited until Monday morning to see what was so special about the M-caves. We walked from our camp site to the cave trail that winds in and around the 15 caves that were on our state park map. We found the trail in the valley was alarmingly steep with long stair cases to the different cave entrances.

Our first cave was called "Match Cave." It's one of the little ones that you have to lie on your belly and wiggle into. We looked inside and wiggled right back out. We obviously are not hard-core spelunkers.

Besides the caves, the park also features lovely stone bluffs and walk-ways. We were blessed with blue skies, even though it was already getting warm even in the shade.

A recent storm knocked some trees down, and the walkways to some of the caves were closed. We made the climbs to the entrances of caves with names like Dug Out Cave and Up-N-Down Cave. We could feel the very welcoming cool air coming out of the caves, but the entrances were just too small for a couple of grandparents.

The first wildlife picture of the day was a tiny frog on the wooden steps heading to a cave. A leaf nearby shows just how tiny this little guy was.

Wide Mouth Cave was true to its name, and we did step inside that wide mouth to cool off a little.

Visitors are told to bring a good flashlight because there is no artificial light in these little caves.

The cave trail is divided in half by the road we drive on to get to our campground. While the north side was a pleasant walk in the woods, none of the caves were big enough to explore. So we took the foot trail to the area south of the road. 

As we crossed the road, we found that all the parking places were full even on a week-day morning at 10:00. The crowds were thicker on this south side, but the caves were bigger too. We can highly recommend going into the series of Dance Hall caves. Have we mentioned how many stairs we traversed in M-Caves State Park?

These large caverns were used for dances in the early 1900's. We were dancing through the welcoming temperatures in the 60s inside the caves!

Have we mentioned all the stairs to climb up and down in this park?

We could enter at the Upper, Middle, or Lower Dance Hall entrances. But we chose to stay underground and walked through all three of these connected caves for a break from the heat outside.

The difference in temperature between the caves and outdoors was enough to make our eye glasses fog.

The difference between the dark cave interior and the sunshine outside was enough to make our eyes hurt. You can barely see Denisa in the shadows of the cave in the lower left-hand corner of the picture below.

Despite the crowds, we spotted a woodchuck in the forest beside the trail.

He was feasting on the abundant greenery, and pretended not to notice there were so many visitors to his home.

We should have counted the number of stairs we climbed. Most of them were wooden staircases, but some were hewn rock steps that led through narrow rock openings.

We tried the Rainy Day Cave,  but turned around when we saw that the line of high school students coming out were muddy with very wet feet and shoes. Our next favorite was the Ice Cave. On a day when the "feels like" temperature was getting close to 100, it was great to sit inside and spend some time in refrigeration mode.

We walked by balanced rock, and then back to our campground. After sweating through 2.7 miles of trail and stairs at M-Caves State Park, it was time for another shower before we hit the road. We talked about the fact that we still didn't know how to pronounce the name of this very nice state park. All we knew for sure was how NOT to pronounce it. 

Our last stop in Iowa was at the Spanish Mine Recreation Area. Like the name implies, the Spanish mined lead here many years ago.  We were glad to see that we knew how to pronounce all the words in this park's name. We stopped in at the park's nature center, where a raccoon was looking for a free meal at the bird feeders.

In spite of the heat, we took a mile-long hike to see the tall rock walls left from the mining process.

Even when it's hot, Denisa will stop to take a picture of the unusual local wildflowers on a trail.

We were wishing for the shade of those tall pine trees from M- Caves State Park by the time we finished our hike.

A few miles down the road was an easier quarter-mile hike to the Julian Dubuque Memorial. The stone tower was high above the Mississippi River with great views of the largest river in the United States. We were just a few miles from the city of Dubuque, Iowa, named after this Canadian fur trader that bought large tracts of land from the Spanish government and started the first city west of the Mississippi.

Denisa was taking more pictures of the pretty wildflowers this warm day.

The cool waters of the Mississippi River certainly look inviting in July in Iowa.

We drove through the city of Dubuque, and headed over the long bridge that would take us over the MIssissippi River and out of Iowa. We still don't know how to pronounce Maquoketa, but we would recommend a trip to the M-Cave State Park and the surrounding area.