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			The Saturated Camping Trip (Devil's Lake, Wisconsin)

August 17 to 20, 2007. Nancy and I participated in a church singles' camping trip. We knew it was gonna rain, and we went anyways. Refer to the map below (based on Google Earth) and read about it below; you may click on links to view photos. I ended up taking very few photos, lacking a waterproof camera.

Map of Devil's Lake

We arrived late on Friday night, the light already gone and the fire dying down. I was introduced to numerous friends and acquaintances of Nancy's, without the benefit of illumination so that I could recognize their faces in the morning. We had just enough time to get Nancy's borrowed tent set up before turning in.

Nancy slept well. However, I had the bad fortune of having chosen the lesser of my two sleeping bags, trying to make do with the one with a busted zipper. One sliver of my body remained open to the chill all night long, and thus I kept awakening and shifting positions within the bag throughout the night. It was COLD there! The highs were in the 50's to 60 degrees... in the middle of August! Thank goodness for the sweatshirt that Marilyn Mulder loaned to me for the trip.

So Friday night was cold, but at least it was dry. Come Saturday morning (1), the rain began. It started off rather gentle, hinting that it might not last ALL day, and so we tried to delay our hiking plans to allow the sun to reassert itself if possible. Eventually, it was clear that there would be no such reprieve, and if we wanted to do anything it would be done in the rain. I didn't drive 8 hours to not make it to the top of the Baraboo hills ! (2) The hike begins...

On our way down to the trailhead, we went by the gatehouse to register my car, since we arrived too late the previous night to do so. We were told that because they had no computers at the south station, we would have to go to the north shore instead and pay up. Oh well. Then we rejoined the rest of our group, who had all gone down to the beach shelter to get out of the rain for a while. There, Jim showed us all how edible a hickory nut is, by lifting the picnic table to drop its leg on the nut, cracking it open.

The rain really wasn't too bad yet, so off we went. It is all level easy ground until you get to the base of the cliff (3), and start climbing. From there, it looks like an endless mountain of rubble, which is in fact what it turns out to be. Okay, so it only goes up 500 feet; how hard can that be?

We finally get up as high as the Balanced Rock, but this isn't quite the top yet! I point out that as far as I can tell, quite a few of the rocks are balanced, most of them in fact. We pause (4) for a few photos (5), including one at Nancy's preferred place (6) to stop for lunch if it were sunny, but then continue on to reach the top. Only when we get to the summit do we stop for a wet lunch. The lunch bag is soaked through, and we must race through our sandwiches to keep them from getting soggy. Even being under the trees is no help, because they are shedding as much water as they can - they are as saturated as I am. Sitting still for even 15 minutes lets me begin to feel the chill again, as it is about 55 degrees, it is grey, and I am drenched.

The going is a bit easier after lunch, as the trail sticks to the top of the ridge for a while. We are treated to views of birds dashing around out below us, and we can see the whole valley wherein our tents are pitched. Gradually we start to come down, passing through gaps (7) in the soaked rocks, finding them slippery and more dangerous than they seemed coming up. I worry about losing my footing because my legs are now very tired; we take it slow and careful, and though Nancy slips once, nobody is hurt. Now we are really soaked! Nancy has a great idea...

We take our drenched clothes along with a dry set, and head into Baraboo to look for a laundromat. One turns up right next to the nearest gas station, and we spend a while getting both dry and warm. I need it especially, because I have only packed one pair of jeans and one long-sleeve shirt, and I will be relying on my one windbreaker which by this time had become useless. Once dry, the jacket would do an okay job of protecting the dry clothes beneath, for a while. But this rain was nothing if not persistent! If you are accustomed to rainy days that see occasional breaks in the downpour, like I was, you'd be surprised to learn that it simply never ceased raining, all day Saturday and through the night.

Saturday night's plans for dinner got scrubbed, and we went instead to a great little local eatery called the Log Cabin. This place was covered in wood carvings the way an Egyptian sarcophagus is covered in heiroglyphs, and their food was both excellent and cheap! Of course, we might have been appreciating the food based on other factors, such as how good it felt to be indoors. But I ordered a Wisconsin specialty for an appetizer: Cheese Curds. These were like little ball-shaped cheese sticks, and they came with a marinara sauce and a ranch sauce for dipping... wow were they good!

After dinner, we played some games under the main tent, hearing all along that the downpour was strengthening. It was so loud! Then we finally decided to try to sleep, and Nancy and I opted to try to do so in the car. The raindrops were even louder on the metal roof, but that was a small price to pay. Nancy got me up in the middle of the night, though, saying that she was feeling really odd, a sort of sickened claustrophobia, feeling trapped inside this little metal box, unable to escape the reality of the rain. We drove into town at 5 AM, finding just one gas station open, and parked there so that there was a dry refuge nearby, complete with toilets. Our campsite was right nearby the restroom facility, but to get to it meant a trek through mud and worse; the parking lot pavement was much more reassuring.

On Sunday, there were periods when the rain halted briefly, but we had all had enough. After a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and sausage, we all went to work taking down the tents and packing up. There were a few brave souls who had chosen to sleep in their tents, mostly those who had taller air mattresses or cots, or else had an extra tarp draped over their tent to keep the water out. But most tents had wet floors, and I discovered that my sleeping bag was water logged. Fortunately, I still had dry clothes inside my bag, and so after getting all muddy taking down tents, we were able to take one more shower and wear dry clothes for the trip back to Naperville.

So that is my experience at Devil's Lake! A great place to visit, I am sure. I didn't get to see much at all; I heard a WSOR train come down the line on Saturday, but because Nancy had my car keys at the time I was unable to get down to see it, which was painful. There is a scenic rail line close by, and also a crane (bird) conservatory right in Baraboo. But we took in none of that, nor did we get to swim in the lake. I guess we gotta go back.

created by Michael R. Rountree

The Saturated Camping Trip

(Devil's Lake, Wisconsin)