We camped at Kegonsa State Park, nice and wooded, and mostly empty, just the way we like them.
A lovely older gentleman drove around at dusk selling big bags of firewood for $5 and it was a bargain. Due to Emerald Ash Borer quarantines, campers are supposed to get their wood from local sources, even though we did bring some of our lightning struck oak stock pile with us too. Wisconsin charges a $10 fee to enter the parks and the out of state camping rate without electricity is $35, so it was a bit pricier than our IL parks, but honestly, better maintained so worth it.
The next morning, we hit the road and after looking at the map and the predicted fall colors, we decided to drive a few more hours instead of all day and stop just shy of Eau Claire and camp in the Black River National Forest, the southernmost county with 75% or more leaf color. Things were already looking awesome in Monroe County.
First we stopped at Pigeon Creek Nature area for a quick hike on a great nature trail and a look at the primitive campground. It was very lovely.
On the way out I grabbed the WI DNR pamphlet and decided I had to find this rock.
We headed for the first of the three campgrounds in the forest, Castle Mound. The campground was beautiful, shaded by hundred year old pine trees, with yellow aspen and red and pink maples sprinkled throughout. We picked the site with the prettiest colors, and were surprised that there were so few campers here, though many of the sites were reserved for the weekend.
We got settled and decided to take an evening hike on the Nature Trail and Overlook Trail.
Wow is all I could say.
Look, Mom, it's the rock!
I'd have been happy if the trail ended here.
But it didn't. It kept going, with a beautiful ridge line of tumbled boulders and tall pine trees beyond the rock from the brochure.
That is one happy, happy dog. And two happy, happy humans.
We looped back and continued up the trail toward the overlook.
The boys had to stop and wait a lot for me to take my many pictures.
Up and up.
And up. Two sets of these stairs.
To this view. It was breathtaking.
See my death grip on the rail? I'm scared of heights!
Back down to more amazing boulders, mosses, lichens and trees.
Every step of this hike was fantastic. It felt like Colorado or South Dakota, not Wisconsin.
I was so happy I could have cried. The boys loved it too.
One thing we noted about this quick hike, besides the obvious beauty of this place, is that up is easier than down on the knees.
Back to our campsite for some cooking and drinking :)
Somebody needed a nap after all that fun hiking.
The foil wrapped veggies and chicken were yummy. We slept well, except for the middle of the night rainstorm that sounded like acorns pelting the camper.
I'd love to say we cooked a wonderful campfire breakfast, but the truth is, we needed internet for some business that needed tending, and oddly, there was a McDonalds 5 minutes away. And a Walmart, Dennys, Hardees and so much more, just on the other side of the hill. If I lived in that town I would walk that trail every week, but we saw zero people on our hike.
After a quick Mcbreakfast and some work, we went right back to our campsite.
And right back to the top of the hill to catch the view in the morning light.
This time I remembered my hiking stick and it helped the knee problems quite a bit.
I'll spare you the hundred photos I took and just show some highlights.
On our way out, we found the sign that explained this place. We were walking on an ancient seabed, and looking at 400 million year old rocks. I can only imagine what these rocks have seen.
Magical, both in the evening and in the morning.
It was hard to leave, but we had more places to discover.
With a map in my lap, I navigated us to some county campgrounds, through some fall scenery that would not quit.
Our first choice turned out to be all wrong for us, a wide open campground with a chain link fence on a road overlooking a restaurant. So we kept going, and stopped in a cute little town park in Willard for a quick lunch and to look for our next camping spot.
We wound down some scenic roads to this one.
Once again, we got very lucky. Wild Rock Equestrian Campground, with 30 spots and only one taken. We had our pick of the place. The campsites were luxurious, grassy, and only a little full of horse poop :) We loved it here.
Around dusk, a pickup and horse trailer pulled in with a mom and daughter, two horses and a very well mannered black lab. That's as crowded as it got.
Wisconsin has extensive horse, ATV and snowmobile trails, and we really appreciated finding this little gem, with electricity for $21 a night.
This is what a happy man and dog look like :)
A real plus was the understory filled with ferns, not poison ivy. It was just about perfect.
Another great site, and night. We woke to a chill in the air and a golden yellow view out our window.
We packed up leisurely, then drove through hours of mesmerizing fall colors on back roads that surprised us at every turn. My favorite was the Amish bringing in the hay with teams of draft horses as the cows came running in from the fields for a treat, and the young boy, plowing a field with a team of six and his Jack Russell terrier, who stopped and smiled and waved at us as we went by.
I'm smiling right now just to think of it.
What more could we have asked for?
Not a thing. But we got more anyway.
The drive was hypnotic.
And I got my husband to make one more stop, in Dexter County Park, because I thought the leaves might be pretty. They were.
We loved everything about this trip. It was fun, beautiful, full of surprises and serendipity at every turn. Best of all, we saved ourselves four to five extra hours of driving discovering these places we would have never seen otherwise.
This one will be hard to top, but we are going to keep trying.
Until next time.....
