October 2 - Devils Lake, Wisconsin

We kept the electric heat going full blast during the night and despite the temperature dropping to about 25 degrees we stayed warm and none of our pipes froze, thank goodness. It was so nice cooking a breakfast of bacon and eggs indoors and being able to eat it while it was still warm—quite difficult to do when eating outdoors in these temperatures. Since the day was clear albeit cold, we decided to do the Volksmarch at Devil’s Lake State Park about 10 miles south of our campsite and drove there after breakfast.

The Volksmarch at Devil’s Lake State Park is a 12-kilometer loop thru mostly wooded terrain. The first ¾ of the loop is a nice walk in the woods on a wide, well-graded tail used for cross-country skiing in the winter. The last ¼ of the walk climbs up a bluff that overlooks Devil’s Lake, which is a beautiful blue jewel of a lake surrounded by a lush green valley. If you ever walk on this bluff, make sure you take the side trail over to the lake overlooks because that is where you will see really fantastic rock formations. In fact, I would recommend that you cut over to the trail at the edge of the bluff already at the turnoff for “Hawk’s Nest” or before because that old CCC trail gives you nice views of the valley, the lake, and bizarre rock formations. However, if you take this route you should be very careful to avoid the ropes of the rock climbers below and NEVER STEP ON A ROPE because that can damage the rope and lead to a catastrophic failure.

If you take this walk, you should not miss the “Devil’s Door” rock formation because it’s quite impressive. The rocks really don’t look like they should be standing up at all, what with the top rocks just seeming to be ready to topple over at any Moment. Standing right underneath them made me a little nervous, in fact. However, that apprehensiveness is probably just silly because some of the rocks that John and I tried to deliberately shove down into the valley 40 years ago seem to not have moved a millimeter in all that time. We couldn’t budge them then, either, no matter how hard we pushed (and no, I’m not sure that was legal but there definitely weren’t any “Don’t push boulders down the mountainside” signs!). Along the cliff edge trail we also saw at least 5 large raptors just below us that were using the air currents along the cliff edge to gain height for soaring. If I was more patient I might have taken a good picture of them, but we continued on as we were quite out of shape and getting tired.

If you also walk the woodland section of the walk, you should also check out the trees in the park because I think I saw quite a number of American Chestnut trees that were still surviving the chestnut blight. Back east and almost everywhere else I’ve visited in the country these grand old trees have all vanished. This trail is rated a 3+ and the walk took us a little over 3 hours. However, we spent some time taking pictures of rock formations and a deer that was waiting on the trail for us to pass. She waited patiently while I took 10 or so pictures and I finally got the good picture of a deer that I had been wanting so long. What deer was it, you ask? Since the deer in Wisconsin don’t wear nametags, I wasn’t really sure what her name was and as a result we’ll just have to call her “Jane Doe” (sorry!). In any case, we felt the 3+ rating is about right given the steep slope of some grades, and you definitely should wear boots for the really rocky sections—I twisted my ankle 2 or 3 times during the walk but never seriously. In the summer it could get hot (we had unseasonably low temps in the 40s) but most of the trail is deeply shaded which would help.

Understandably enough we were really hungry after the walk and stopped in at a Ponderosa Steakhouse for some juicy 8 ounce steaks and a great salad bar. Having lunch and dinner took a while, but finally we finished and drove back to camp, stopping off at the Ho-Chunk casino along the way. The customer clientele was almost uniformly gray-haired, middle-aged white males and females—I saw only 1 African-American gentleman and no obviously Hispanic folks in the whole place but that may partly be due to the basic ethnic mix of Wisconsin. The casino was quite large and rather tastefully decorated in comparison to the riverboats and so forth I’ve seen. It also was a lot quieter and less flashy than the others—somebody must have turned down the volume on the slot machines. The Ho Chunk casino offered only blackjack and assorted gambling machines, but the gambling machines were much more varied than I have seen at other casinos such as Deadwood, South Dakota, and Cripple Creek, Colorado (see Wanderung 3). Some games seemed to be modeled after TV shows such as Hollywood Squares or Wheel of Fortune, while others were constructed on the theme of popular games such as Monopoly. I was kind of studying these to see if there was any real aspect of playing skill that would affect the odds (there wasn’t that I could tell), and I naturally attracted the attention of a security guard who proceeded to follow us until we left the casino.

Somehow I seem to be a magnet for policemen, security guards, and other good folks whose job it is to preserve law and order. I’m not sure whether that is due to my generally scruffy appearance or to my somewhat bizarre behavior patterns, but I really could do without it. The last 3 times we’ve driven into Canada, I’ve had my car strip searched by the boarder guards, and it’s such a hassle putting all my stuff back together again. At the Ho Chunk casino you can be bounced for being “disruptive” (I read all the posted rules and that was like Rule #7 or so), and I was rather glad I wasn’t declared “disruptive” and escorted promptly off the property. Still, I persevered and finally found a CD of authentic Ho Chunk songs hidden in a drawer in the adjacent tobacco store. Actually I had to specifically and politely (desperately trying not to be “disruptive”, you see) ask the guy at the counter and describe the cover of the CD, but he did find it for me off to the side of the huge stacks of cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco. I take it that most casino customers do not come here to purchase artifacts of Ho Chunk culture, apparently, so once again I was being bizarre, which I seem to be able to do so effortlessly in some settings.

Wandering thru the casino seemed to help limber us up again, so back at camp we walked over to the bathrooms for quick showers (they were unheated but at least the water was warm and it was still chilly) before retiring to the trailer for the night. Given the luxury of warmth and several electrical outlets I plugged in the printer and printed off some pictures of our new trailer for the folks back home, after which we wrote the accompanying letters and turned in for the night—after the meal we had at Ponderosa, we certainly didn’t need any dinner!