Devil's Lake (finally) to the Devil's Window

 

The main reason we made this stop near Baraboo, Wisconsin, was because we wanted to spend some time in Devil's Lake State Park. The rock climbing guide from our trip to Arkansas in April was from Baraboo, and she told us her favorite place to climb was Devil's Lake. So after three days of planning around the heat and the smoke, we were up early this morning to (finally) make the hike. The smoke moved out and when we started the hike at 7 a.m. It was a comfortable temperature in the 70's.

We started at the CCC parking lot within the state park. That's because we had read that this would give us the hard part of the hike first when we were freshest and the temperature was the coolest. This hike was rated as strenuous, and we soon found out why.

We were on a constant uphill climb. It was like being on a stairmaster to the top of the bluff overlooking Devil's Lake.

At times we would come out of the forest to an overlook. We paused there for the increasingly higher views--and to catch our breath.

This hike reminded us of Colorado hikes, where steep scree fields often decorate the sides of mountains.

The only other people we found on this early morning hike were rock climbers. These rock faces are well-known to experienced climbers like our guide in Arkansas.

We talked to a guide getting a route set up for a group of guys for a bachelor party. This natural rock face does not have permanent anchors. So this guide must lay out a route and put natural anchors on the rocks.

These rock faces are straight down, and it was a long ways to the ground. 

The smoke had pretty well left this area, but this day we had a thick layer of low clouds that was hiding the sunrise.

We had wandered into another of God's wonders!

After getting to the top of the bluff, it was a pleasant and basically flat walk along the top of the ledge. Then we took a downhill detour to one of the signature rock formations in the park--Devil's Window. You can see it on the right side of the picture below.

We hiked closer. At first, Mark was content to stand at the bottom of the Devil's Window formation.

Then he climbed behind the rocks and onto the platform to the left of the rocks. The lighting wasn't great, but you can see him if you look carefully in the bottom left corner of the picture below.

Then four boys and a father showed up, and they scrambled their way into the opening of the window. We took some pictures for them. Well, we guess if a bunch of kids can do it, so can an old man. He might have a scraped shin as a souvenir, but we got the signature shot of Mark right in the Devil's Window!

We hiked back up the trail to the ledge, for the last picture high above Devil's Lake.

Then it was the worst part of the hike--going all the way down on that endless stairmaster. Denisa actually prefers going up rather than down. Her knees don't like that constant downward motion. No one has ever fallen UP the mountain, but falling DOWN this steep set of slippery rock steps was a very real possibility. We have developed a system where Denisa laces her fingers through the back strap on Mark's backpack. That gives her a stabilizer that saved her from two different falls on the way down this day.

Half-way down was another of this park's best rock formations. It's a small detour to "balanced rock."

While Denisa was content to sit beside the rock, of course Mark thought it would be a better picture to stand beside it. That's a big hunk of rock trying to nudge him off the steep edge.

Back down at lake level, it was another mile's hike to get back to the pickup. We hiked 2.5 miles with 610 feet in elevation gain on this early morning hike. It was warming up, but we were glad that we had finally seen the view from the window at Devil's Lake.

The good thing about getting up so early is that we still had a lot of morning left. So we made the drive into Baraboo for their Saturday morning farmer's market. We found some interestingly purple bread at one of the booths. Made from the Ube (pronounced "you-bay") plant, the vender was raised in the Philippines where ube is popular.

We are always looking for interesting things to eat in new places. We had a colorful picture from our three farmer's market purchases--purple Spanish ube bread, red goat meat stick, and a green zucchini squash.

We took showers, hooked up the trailer and dumped tanks, and were on the road to our next destination before lunch. It was a three hour drive across central Wisconsin where we zigged and zagged across county roads. The good news was that some of those narrow paved roads were through Amish communities. We love finding things like a field of wheat put up in shocks.

As soon as we saw the Amish buggy signs along the highway, Denisa started googling for bakeries. Our phone signal was almost non-existent, but we lucked into finding "Oven Fresh Bakery" somewhere down a county road in central Wisconsin. There was no parking for the trailer on this narrow country road, so Mark stayed in the pickup while Denisa bought a pan of caramel pecan rolls, a peach fried pie, a cream-filled bismarc, and a piece of pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. Only open on Friday and Saturday, we were lucky to be here at the right time. With the number of customers carrying out huge bags of baked goods, we were also lucky to have some inventory left to purchase.

While Denisa was shopping, Mark caught sight of movement on the hillside. A horse-powered mower was cutting the grass on the hill.

With our sweet Amish treasures, we were back on the road and excited about our next destination. We pulled into a Boondocker Welcome site in Door County, Wisconsin. It was a perfectly level spot near a grass air strip, and we were parked in front of their hangar. It was so fun meeting our host, who had local tourist information and smoke masks for us. The air quality was actually better today than yesterday, but still hovering in the unhealthy zone.

We couldn't wait to start exploring Door County. So we made the three mile drive to a nearby county park for our first view of our first of the five Great Lakes on this trip.

This is Lake Michigan, and specifically Green Bay. That fluorescent sun is getting low in the sky over one of the largest fresh-water lakes in the world. It felt more like we were on an ocean beach instead of a lake shore.

We were the only ones at the county park this evening, and that allowed us to get close enough for a blurry picture of a kingfisher before he flew out of range.

We also got a picture of a less attractive flyer. We knew that the areas around the Great Lakes can be plagued with biting flies and mosquitoes. Some of these big guys can be aggressive, so we bought some aggressive bug spray and netting to combat them. This was our first time (this trip) to get chased by one of these mean flies.

It has been a good travel day that started with (finally) hiking to the Devil's Window at Devil's Lake, and ended with a walk on a rocky beach on Lake Michigan. Besides some smoke and one aggressive fly, life is good!

Thankful for a blue-sky boat ride in the Wisconsin Dells

As predicted, the smoke left us in Wisconsin almost as quickly as it had appeared. Most of the state of Michigan had been in the clutches of air quality scores over 200 with state maps shaded in red and purple. But Wisconsin was glad to see some green and yellow on their air quality map this afternoon. You don't realize how much you miss them, until you realize how good it was to see blue skies and white clouds again.

We decided to celebrate the smoke-free afternoon with a boat ride. One of the must-see things in the Wisconsin Dells is a ride up the Wisconsin River to the Upper Dells.

Mark found the best deal was to buy the tickets at the Baraboo Civic Center at the Parks and Recreation office to get a $6 discount per ticket. Then we drove to the Wisconsin Dells and got in line for the boat tour on the Chief.

It was the height of tourist season, and they were running nine boats on the river that day. They leave every 30 minutes or so, and we figured there were about 100 people on our full boat. That's a lot of people doing this must-see activity!

We loaded the boat, and most of the seats were taken on the top deck by the time we got on. So we had to split up, and Denisa got a front row seat. We definitely thought that these top deck seats provided the best views. But they also were the wettest when it started sprinkling on us. It was so hot that we were glad to have the moisture and the cloud cover that little shower brought.

We spent about thirty minutes, boating up the river through the tall bluffs. Our tour was narrated by our female host that told jokes that made the entire group groan. It was delightful!

Our boat captain took us by the rock formation that looked like Chief Black Hawk (on the left) and Chimney rock (on the right). Our host also pointed out twin rock spires that she named "Kate" and "Duplikate." Yes, the whole boat groaned at that one too.

The only wildlife we saw were a pair of eagles sitting high up in an evergreen on the banks of the Wisconsin River.

We thought about kayaking the river on our own, but we worried about paddling home against the current. Also, this boat ride has two stops on private property that we would have missed. 

The first stop was at witch's gulch. We got off the boat with the other 98 passengers on our boat, at the same time another boat was also unloading. That's a lot of people making their way through the narrow scenic gulch. It was tough to take a picture without the other 98 people in it. Denisa purposefully took a picture of the line of people in front of us.

By pausing a moment (and also using the scrub feature on our phones to remove some of those people), we got some decent pictures on the short walk through the gulch.

At the end of the walk was a concession stand and bathrooms. The narrator from our boat was available to take pictures.

While the rest of the boat load of people were in line to buy $5 soft drinks and pop corn, we went back into witch's gulch and got some good pictures without the crowd.

We didn't even have to scrub extra bodies out of those photos. This boat stop on private property was only available to boat passengers.

It was easier to enjoy wandering through God's wonders when there wasn't so many of God's people in the way.

This walk through Witch's Gulch reminds us a little of Watkins Glen in up-state New York.

Then they started herding the boat passengers away from the concession stand, and we were once again in the middle of a crowd. What a difference the experience was when we were in a big group!

We reloaded the boats for the five-minute trip to our last stop at stand rock. Again on private property, visitors can only see this if they bought a boat ticket.

This was heralded as the home of stop-action photography, where the instantaneous shutter was first used successfully. The photographer father had his son make the five-foot jump over and over to get the famous photo. It took 17 jumps to get this photo.

This day we had a border collie jumping. We had to be quick on the instantaneous shutter on our cell phone to get the jump over to stand rock.

Don't blink, because the dog jumps back to the other side immediately.

We walked back along the rocky bluff. Again, many of our boat-mates were buying more snacks and souvenirs, so we had the path almost to ourselves. We should mention again how thankful we were to see this blue sky. After a couple days of smoky skies, we didn't take it for granted.

If you haven't tried the newest scrub feature on your phone, we can report that it's kinda fun to remove those visitors that like to lounge in the prettiest places and show up in your photos. The picture below used to have a couple extra tourists in it before they were "scrubbed."

After the rain clouds disappeared, the top deck of our tour boat felt a little like a frying pan. We weren't in any hurry to load up.

We were glad when our captain pointed our boat south for the thirty minute trip back to town. The breeze on the water felt good! For those that want a more thrilling and breezy adventure, jet boat rides were also available on this stretch of the Wisconsin Dells.

We had our travel path pretty well determined, with detailed reservations for camping spots during this busy summer travel season. We were also meeting a group in northern Wisconsin in a week, so we didn't have too many options for missing the terrible wildfire smoke that engulfed all of Michigan, Minnesota, and much of Wisconsin. We were thankful for this blue sky afternoon for a boat ride in the Wisconsin Dells, and we prayed for the people that were directly affected by the fires in Canada and Minnesota.