Hiking Devils Lake State Park in Wisconsin

Adventure Tuesday again, and this time I'll bring you to Devils Lake. I brought my DSLR camera on the hike, but since I wasn't hiking with W, I actually didn't take that many pictures. I did snap quite a few with my phone though, as always. 

Devils Lake State Park

    It's been hot, like for a Swede hot. It's in the upper 80s -90s (27-35 C) almost every day now, and humid, some mornings it's about 98% humidity. A friend of mine suggested going on a hike around a lake, and then finish of with a dip in the water. Of course we weren't the only people there, many many cars and parking lot was already filling up early in the morning when we arrived. Most people go there to BBQ, hang out and swim in the water. Fewer people actually do hike the trail, although, plenty of people compared to a day-hike in Alaska. I have a falcon guide book to hikes near Madison that actually describes this hike as "one of the tougher in the book". I guess this speaks to the fact that there aren't any mountains, or large hills in Wisconsin. There are several trails, you can walk along the ridge on both sides of the lake, which is what we did, in that way you actually get some views too. 

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The Landscape   

    Since we wanted to hike on the ridge, we quickly started to climb and got some gorgeous views of the lake and the forest. The landscape is really pretty, boulders mixed with both deciduous and coniferous trees. And boulders, lots of boulders, leftover from glaciers back in the day, combined with lush green vegetation, like everywhere in Wisconsin. The area is a great spot for vulture watching, and we did see quite a few, but hard to catch with your iphone camera. We saw more signs of glaciers, and then one of the main attraction, which everyone else wanted to see and touch too: the Balanced Rock.

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Trail Maintenance

    They really take care of their trails here, almost a little too much maybe. Parts of the trail actually had asphalt on it. Makes it easier to hike on though, and less erosion i would think, but not sure how it works during a heavy rainstorm. I would think it would channelize the rainwater? 

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 I had a really great time, even though this is very different from Alaska. On the other hand it's very similar to Sweden. At the end of the day that dip in the water felt very good. 

Where do you go to swim, do you have any nearby lakes? Or maybe outdoor pools?

Why aren't you busy?

Aug 8th, Monday

“Say, Pooh, why aren't you busy?” I said.
“Because it’s a nice day,” said Pooh.
“Yes, but—”
“Why ruin it?” he said.
“But you could be doing something Important,” I said.
“I am,” said Pooh.
“Oh? Doing what?”
“Listening,” he said.
“Listening to what?”
“To the birds.  And that squirrel over there.”
“What are they saying?” I asked.
“That it’s a nice day,” said Pooh.
“But you know that already,” I said.
“Yes, but it’s always good to hear that somebody else thinks so, too,” he replied…

- The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff

The neighborhood

A lot of times when I have some time over during the day or in the evening I go for short walks through the neighborhood. There are so many parks around town, and the streets are really lush and green.

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How's the area you live in?

Bad weather?

July 21:

    Ever since I got here it's been hot, like really hot. Ok, I know that a lot of people are used to temperatures up in the 90's and above combined with humidity up towards 90%, me? not so much. I am so happy that we bought an AC right when I got here, because I don't think I would have been able to survive otherwise. I like it cool, I love sweater weather, and this is everything but sweater weather. 

    We seem to have these high pressure storms, where the heat is always combined with some sort of rainstorm. Makes it hard to dress for hot temperatures and rain, I am definitely not used to that. W and I got a metrological weather station for Christmas that measures wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, rain accumulation and rate, and humidity and temperature of course. It's been really cool to have it now when we've had these rainstorms to see how much rain we get. Usually it says "it's raining cats and dogs". Madison is about the same latitude as southern France, so for someone who never lived more south than say the southern part of Canada (cause that is right about where the latitude of Cranfield in UK is, and of course, Stockholm Sweden which is approximately southern part of Alaska, and then of course, Fairbanks Alaska, Madison is far far south. Fairbanks do get hot in the summertime, I mean, we've had weather up in the 90's before, but generally that doesn't last very long, and it's usually very dry, so not the same type of heat that we experience here. I only had one pair of shorts when I moved here, yeah one pair, a climbing pair. Well, and one pair of running shorts. But as you can understand I went shopping for more after a few weeks in this heat. Best money spent in a long time, and I came home with 6 different pairs of shorts. 

    As I have mentioned earlier Madison lays in (on?) an Isthmus, and we have two lakes on either side, Monona and Mendota. We usually swim in Monona, and while it is definitely not clear, it has been semi OK. Yesterday I biked by the lake and eek what a smell, I was just thinking on the bike ride that it would be nice to maybe go for a swim. But that smell, not fresh lake smell, but yeah, algae. There were people over there swimming and having fun in the water, but I don't know, I am a little skeptic. The first three pictures below are of Lake Monona and the fourth one is Lake Mendota.