We awoke to the sound of rain, never a good thing to hear on moving day!  Luckily we were in no hurry since we had a short distance to travel that day.  By the time we were ready to leave, the rain had eased up.  We arrived at Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful, biggest and most popular parks in the upper Midwest.  It has 500 foot bluffs that look out over a 360 acre lake.  The hiking ranges from easy trails to those that are very difficult.

We were somewhat disappointed in our campsite.  The majority of the sites in the park are hilly and it was difficult to level the RV.  We changed sites and still did not have a site in which we could completely level the coach.  That rarely happens to us.  We had heard about the flies in Michigan before we left Florida in June.  We had been pleasantly surprised not to find the flies or mosquitoes to be much of a problem.  That changed once we arrived here.  The flies are horrible for some reason and we have to race in and out of the door to avoid them dashing inside.

One day we took a scenic drive through the park with 15 stops and a written commentary to follow.

 

It wasn’t the most scenic drive we have found in our travels so far, but we did find some ancient native mounds dating back over 1,000 years.  These were done by a group of Native Americans called the Effigy Mound Builders.  Not much is known about this group of Native Americans but it is thought they used the mounds for burial grounds, festivals and special rites.  The name Devil’s Lake originally came from Native American names which translated to Spirit Lake, Holy Lake, Mystery Lake, or Sacred Lake.  It was the Winnebago tribe that gave it the name which when translated means Devil’s Lake.

 

The majority of the parks we enjoy were built many years ago by a wonderful group called the CCCs…Civilian Conservation Corps.  Devil’s Lake is no exception.  From 1934 to 1941, during the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps operated a work camp for 200 young men at Devil’s Lake.  Many of the trails, roads, picnic tables, signs, etc were thanks to them.

 

Interesting tidbits about Devil’s Lake include the fact that the Ringling Brothers once owned a lakehouse here and elephants bathed in Devil’s Lake.  Ulysses S Grant and Abraham Lincoln’s wife also visited Devil’s Lake.

 

Tuesday we drove 15 miles to Reedsburg to ride our bikes on the 400 Wisconsin Trail, a former railroad track that has been converted to a beautiful bike trail.  The trail opened in 1993 and was named after the Chicago-Northwestern passenger train that at one time traveled the 400 miles between Chicago and Minneapolis/St Paul in 400 minutes.  As we rode along the trail we had pastures with farmland and cattle on one side and the Baraboo River on the other.  We pretty much had the trail to ourselves and found 28 geocaches.