When I wrote the bucket list, I heard about Devil’s Lake and
the hiking there. I was never there but it sounded like something fun to do. My
family, even though I was a Girl Scout and my brother an Eagle Scout, were
never big outdoorsy people. We didn’t camp. We didn’t take trips to the beach.
We didn’t spend the day in a state or county park. Vacations were usually to
cities… Orlando, Branson, Colorado Springs.
As I was writing the bucket list back in 2000-2001, I included many
outdoorsy things because I like the outdoors, hiking, and just exploring the
world around me.
Devil’s Lake is a state park near Wisconsin Dells. If I went
to the Dells, it was usually to go to Noah’s Ark and not to go hiking. Now the
Dells, is a place I can’t go there from here kinda place. It’s a 2 hour drive
because there is no direct route and minimal 4 lane highways. It’s just not a
place I go to regularly anymore…usually we’re there for basketball.
As the weekend in the Dells with my brothers approached, I
noticed the weather forecast was going to warm for December and thought it
possibly I could get to Devil’s Lake on Saturday. I mentioned this to the group beforehand and
no one was as excited by this as I was. They wanted to go to the waterpark and
shopping. On Saturday morning, I convinced Tanya to come hiking with me. The
hubby took Bob, Tanya, and me to Devil’s Lake. The guys didn’t want to hike but
decided to hang out by the lake.
It probably wasn’t the best day for a hike weather-wise. It
was foggy and misty out. You could barely see the cliffs on the other side of
the lake. The fog did make for some cool pictures though. The temperature
actually was perfect for hiking despite the damp conditions.
Tanya and I headed out from the lake and went over the
tracks, even though we were told not to walk on the tracks. We couldn’t find a
trail. The map we had didn’t really help. The trails weren’t marked very
clearly where we were. We followed the road and found a steep short trail to
the nature center. From there we followed the road again. This wasn’t quite
what I had in mind. I wanted a trail to follow.
Finally we found some hikers and asked them where the trail
was. We must have looked like idiots because the trail was right across from
the parking lot we were standing in. He said we could follow the trail or climb
the stairs to the top of the bluff. We decided to climb the stairs. When I
think of stairs, I think of actually wooden steps and not rocks that are
placed, or fallen, haphazardly in a general stair pattern.
WHAT.A.WORKOUT. I was huffing and a puffing
by the time we reached the first “landing”. The views were great. We did climb
to about the third “landing” and decided to head back down.
Once we were safely back to the bottom, we followed the
trail back to the lake. The best part of this trail was that it is part of the
Ice Age Trail which meant I got to cross two things of the bucket list. Since
the Ice Age trail is several hundred miles, I decided any part of the Ice Age
Trail counted. Maybe one day I will actually a good chunk of the trail and not
like a ¼ mile of it. When we got back to the lake the guys thought we walked
around the lake since we came from the opposite direction we started. Um…
that’s 10 miles. We weren’t gone that long.
I was glad I could finally say I hiked Devil’s Lake and got
to see the beauty of the state park. I wish it was closer as I would be there
all the time. It is a gorgeous park with great trails even though we only hiked
a small portion of it. Maybe one day I’ll make it to the top of that bluff.
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