Everything Monarch Butterflies - Wandering Among More of God's Tiny Wonders

Our Boondocker Welcome host was so much fun to visit with, and we really enjoyed getting to know Ramelle! She has one of the most interesting hobbies, and she has taught us so much about raising Monarch butterflies since we arrived to Door County, Wisconsin. One room of her home was filled with the net enclosures where she watches the miraculous process unfold.

It starts with a white egg that is only the size of a pinhead. Ramelle doesn't go out looking for the eggs. But they seem to find her. When she is gathering fresh milk weed for her caterpillars to eat, she might unknowingly bring in an egg. When that happens, she sets that plant aside, and waits to see if it will hatch in 3-5 days.

When it hatches, it is so tiny that a camera can hardly focus on it. That new little caterpillar is very hungry, and Ramelle has to be sure that it has a good plant source to eat. So she goes out gathering milkweed . . . it might have new eggs on it  . . . and the cycle continues.

We watched her caterpillars as they devoured the plants she brought in for them. Because of pesticides and other bugs, she carefully cleans each of the plants she brings in from her yard.

The caterpillar/larva stage lasts 9-14 days. During this time, it will outgrow its skin five times. Each of those growth stages between molts is called an instar. Ramelle pointed out that this one just molted out of its skin because its antenna were still bent from the process.

During this hungry caterpillar stage, there is lots of--ahem--excrement. It's a full-time job cleaning up after these pooping machine.

When the caterpillar grows to be about two inches long, the larvae will crawl up to the top of the enclosure, or onto the highest leaf, and form a "J." It spins a very tough fiber that attaches its back end securely. This fiber has to withstand the wind and the rain outdoors. Here inside the butterfly nursery, its chances of success are so much higher.

We had never seen the process of a chrysalis forming, or really thought about how it happened. Do they spin that smooth green cocoon out of silk? First of all, it's not a cocoon, even though the children's book "The Hungry Caterpillar" uses that term. It's a chrysalis.  Ramelle schooled us on the correct butterfly terminology. That J-Shaped caterpillar will begin writhing until its striped skin breaks open. What is underneath is that mint green color. The caterpillar keeps wiggling until the striped skin is bunched up into a little dry wad that will fall off the top. At this first stage, the chrysalis is still bumpy.

As it dries, it becomes smooth and the gold dots emerge. What a beautiful jewel it becomes! This is a miracle to watch.

It will hang completely still for 10-14 days during this process of metamorphosis. It's a miracle that something so still can be undergoing such dramatic change. When the green color darkens, Ramelle knows it's almost ripe. At the very final stage, we could see through the chrysalis to see the color of the wings inside.

We got a text message from Ramelle that the butterfly was emerging, and we hurried over to the butterfly nursery. It cracked open the clear shell, and first the legs were free.

Those beautiful wings were still folded up as the butterfly emerged upside down. It seems like its abdomen is very big when it first emerges. 

We were completely enthralled with the whole process, but Ramelle has seen it hundreds of times. She was pleased that we were enjoying it so much. She had the smile of a proud new parent while we watched this miracle literally unfold.

The butterfly hung upside down, latching onto the chrysalis shell as it swung back and forth to unfold those rumpled wings. It was also pumping fluid from its swollen abdomen into its wings.

The monarchs in Wisconsin live for about one month. During that time they will lay eggs on the milkweed plants and then die. This generation that was hatching in July will do the same.

It doesn't take long before those rumpled wings straighten into beautifully formed flat wings. They will begin flapping them open to continue to dry and harden them.

After building up their strength and getting completely dry, it was time to coax them gently onto your hand. We unzipped the net enclosure, and escorted them into the garden. Coming out of the chrysalis early this morning, this girl flew as soon as Denisa opened her hand.

Her brother didn't emerge from the chrysalis until afternoon, and he was content to ride on Mark's hand for a tour around the garden. This generation will produce the eggs that will become the migrating butterflies.

We learned how to tell the difference between the male and female monarchs. We know this was a male because of the dark dots on the veins in the bottom wings. The female will not have those dots, and her black veins will be thicker and more pronounced.

Ramelle called us one evening to let us know that the 60 Minutes television show was airing their monarch butterfly segment. It was great timing to increase our butterfly education. It showed the map of where the migrating monarchs spend the summer in the northern parts of North America. That's where the generations will live for a month at a time until they produce the magical migratory generation. That generation will not produce the reproduction organs until later. Instead, the migrators will know when to start the 2,500-mile flight south to a safe place to spend the winter. While the preceding generations live and die in less than a month, this migrating generation will live about eight months.

That safe winter place is in a shrinking forest in Mexico. Now protected as a natural reserve, millions of monarchs somehow know the path to get there. None of these butterflies have ever been here before, yet they know where to go. That's another miracle! The 60 Minutes program showed the forest with trees and ground covered with millions of butterflies that stay alive for that long journey, plus all of the winter months. Then they know when and how to start the journey back to where they were hatched in the north. While one butterfly makes the 2,500-mile journey south in the fall, it will take several generations to make the trip back north in the spring. How those new butterflies know where they are going is yet another miracle!

Spending time with Ramelle and her butterflies gave us a front row seat to more of God's wonders. How a little white egg can turn into a caterpillar that can turn into a butterfly that can fly its way across a continent on those delicate wings--that's a whole set of miracles that remind us we are wandering among God's tiny wonders!

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!