KD Park and North Branch Conservation Area

I've had to work every other day this week and it's been in the 90's every day so I've stuck close to home for my walks. I hit the North Branch Conservation Area which is part of the Grand Illinois Trail that runs through Richmond, Illinois and Genoa City, Wisconsin before turning back toward Hebron. They've done some prairie restoration out there and there are lots of birdhouses and wildflowers along the trail which is used by hikers, bikers, and snowmobiles in the winter.

We had rain the night before for the first time in two weeks and the birds were very active.  I know very little about birds but would like to learn, so if I've identified these birds incorrectly please let me know! It looks like the first picture is of tree swallows, I can't tell what the one by the hole of the birdhouse is unless it's a juvenille tree swallow. I was about to give up on the second one until I got almost to the back of the National Geographic Field Guide and determined it must be a Dickcissel. What a pretty call it has!

This morning my neighbor and I checked out KD Park, a new Kenosha County Park on Route KD. Very original name, isn't it? A former gravel quarry, the KD Park encompasses 234 acres of land and a 39-acre lake.  A 36-acre wetlands within the park has been identified as a critical species habitat  because the site supports two rare bird species (Forster's Tern and Great Egret).  It also supports a healthy tick population because Margie found two on her in my car on our way home! Somehow I was spared, even though I kept nosing around on the edges of the 2.5 mile trail looking for wildlife.

And in my front yard this morning I found these guys foraging in the flower beds. The little one might be a chipping sparrow, but I checked two different field guides and the internet without determining what the gray one is. Help me! I'm getting ready to run some errands now and might stop at the McDonald Woods in Lake Villa, Illinois. Hopefully I'll see wildlife and not a red-haired clown!

Kettle Moraine - Paradise Springs and Scuppernong Springs

After I hiked the Scuppernong Trail on Sunday I still had some time to kill before being able to settle in to my campsite so I headed over to Paradise Springs Nature Area.

It's a paved looped trail that leads to a catch and release trout fishing pond. At the far end of the loop is the spring house. The interpretive signs in the spring house were missing and/or vandalised so I had to look up the history on the internet: in the 1800's an individual visiting a local farm drank water from one of the springs and believed it to have healing/restorative power.  He promoted this idea and word spread, creating a booming spa and recreation era that actually was the basis for the forming of Waukesha county. Hard to believe this was once a resort area; now this part of Wisconsin is nothing but farms and small towns. Eagle is so small that there was no restaurant open for me to have dinner and no grocery store either so I had to eat a bag of potato chips from the gas station!  I didn't get a picture of the spring house because people were using it to cool down.  I wandered around the pond and took pictures of the twelve spotted skimmers and tadpoles instead.

 There wasn't much else to see, so I drove back to Ottawa Lake and parked across the street at the Scuppernong Springs Trailhead. The hiking trail is a former railbed that led to Eagle Lime Products company that mined marl here almost a century ago. A strange oversight doomed the company. While the process of incinerating, cooling and packaging the lime was simple, the large-scale machinery needed to make the business economical required large amounts of fuel. Scattered hardwood trees in the vicinity quickly fell to the axe, followed by less useful softwoods. Scouts discovered a thin vein of "coal" north of the marsh, near Ottawa Lake. It was probably a peat deposit. There are no coal deposits in Wisconsin. Company officials also discovered that farmers in the region preferred to haul marl themselves from local sources. The firm's competitors in the quicklime business routinely ran even larger-scale operations, further eroding its bottom line.

After only six years of actual lime production (1908 to 1914), mining and processing operations ceased. Some of the ruins are still located along the trail.

Further along the trail there are several bridges crossing the Scuppernong River. I couldn't resist taking off my shoes and climbing in to explore.

 

All good things must come to an end (especially when the rocks are covered with sharp little barnacles and you forget to pack your water shoes) so I got my shoes back on, finished the trail, and headed to my campsite.

I set up my tent cot, opened up my gourmet dinner of potato chips from the gas station, and settled in to read "Timeline" by Michael Crichton on my new Kindle. It was great to read hands-free and it didn't take me long to get used to the slight blur when you turn the page.  When I reserved this book (six months ago when I bought the Nook and returned it...don't get me started on the library reservation system!) I didn't realize that it was one that I've already read, but it's a great story so I was happy to read it again, especially since it was free!  

Sweet Angeline's in Richmond, Illinois

When my neighbor and I went for a walk on the trail going through the town of Richmond about a week ago, we discovered that a new baker has set up shop. They even let us sample some of the mango cake with cream cheese frosting, and that was all it took to get me hooked!

I decided to buy four different treats to bring home and try.  I got the cinnamon roll, a mango mini-cake, the chocolate cupcake and the mint cupcake. They were all sinfully delicious, but the mint cupcake was my favorite. Everything was so good that the chocolate came in last...definitely not how it usually goes!  She also serves pannini sandwiches and sometimes homemade soup and I'm looking forward to stopping in for lunch sometime, too.

 Margie and I stopped in again today to celebrate my birthday, and I couldn't resist coming home with another box full of goodies! I got the mint cupcake, the cinnamon roll, the bourbon vanilla cupcake and decided to try a spinach-swiss croissant as well.  I tried the pecan roll today with a cup of tea outside for our celebration, and Margie had the chocolate cupcake with buttercream frosting and an expresso bean on top.  It was good...but the mint cupcake still wins, hands down!

 I just couldn't resist writing up an entry about Angela's goodies and hope she is successful in her new business and that I'll be tempted for a long time with her bake shop just minutes from my home!

Kettle Moraine State Forest - Scuppernong Trails

For my birthday I decided to go camping by myself at the Lake Ottawa Campground in Kettle Moraine State Forest. I've been to some of the hiking and mountain biking trails in the forest but thought it would be a good time to see the rest of the Southern Unit. Most of the other parks within a 2 hour drive were booked up on Sunday night, so I figured it would be a good time to cross this off my to-do list.

After stopping at the ranger station to pay for my campsite I headed over to the Scuppernong trail system. There are three trails that start out together and then branch off for varying lengths and degrees of difficulty. I chose the green trail which was the  longest, but cut across via the Ice Age National Trail at one point and trimmed it down to about 4 miles.  Where the trails all began together it was getting pretty steady use for a late Sunday morning, and seemed to be especially popular with runners. The trail itself was a nice packed sand, with some embedded rocks and the occasional tree root on some of the hilly sections.  Since Wayne and I seem to always be going fast, I decided to take it slow and try to find insects to photograph.

 I also pulled some garlic mustard, just couldn't stop myself! When we were at Kohler-Andrae a ranger told me about "galls" on plants being filled with insects, so when I spotted one on my hike I couldn't resist cutting it open to see for myself.

I took a left on the Ice Age trail when the opportunity arose, and the trail was narrower and led deep into the forest. My only companions were the chipmunks and squirrels crunching on the leaves.

 Eventually I linked back up with the green trail which was much more open and getting pretty warm with the midday temperature hitting about 90. Flowers were in bloom in the full sun, and the moths, butterflies and skippers were loving it!

It took me about 3 hours to complete my 4 miles...glacier speed for me, which was appropriate in this land shaped by glacial activity! I only rested once, and while I cooled down I thought about Peggy over at Camping Tales and how she camps and explores alone often. I was having a great time by myself, but maybe someday I'll be lucky enough to share an adventure with her in her neck of the woods! But instead of looking out for spiders I'll have to keep an eye out for 'gators!

Kohler-Andrae State Park

We made it to Kohler-Andrae State Park a few miles south of Sheboygan just before dark, and after checking in with Dianna at the visitor center we took a pull-through site for 2 nights. We were a little surprised when we got to it because it wasn't like any pull-through we'd seen before.

Our "site" looked just like a parallel parking spot to me, but it turned out to not be as bad as it seemed. In the wooded area next to the site was a path leading to a fire ring and picnic table, and the wooded part of the site was quite large.  We thought about changing sites in the morning since we didn't need to unhook from the truck for the night, but decided it didn't matter because we'd be on the go the rest of the day anyway.  We scoped out the rest of the sites and for a larger camper like ours we liked sites 8, 10, 17, 23, 26, 28 or 33.

 In the morning we rode our bikes through all the camping loops and had three deer sightings while riding around.  We also stumbled upon a teepee site for rent.  The teepee is $34-37 a night, and was equipped with cots, a fire ring and a picnic table but no pets allowed. I bet little kids would love it!

 

Another feature we've never seen before is access to a beach wheelchair. 

 The notice was posted at the Sanderling Nature Center that we biked to only to find out they didn't open until 12:30. We read up on the details of the keel section of the Great Lakes Schooner "Challenge" built in 1852 that  had washed ashore and was on display. Wayne wondered why they never make any effort to apply any kind of coating to preserve these items so that they last and I'm betting it has something to do with having been in the water. He said it didn't matter if it didn't last anyway because in 200 years people would probably be using time travel for their vacations and they could just go back in time and sail on a schooner themselves!

 

 We parked our bikes at the Nature Center and accessed the 1/2 mile Creeping Juniper Nature Trail from the parking lot. It started out along Lake Michigan as part of the Dunes Cordwalk with a view of the lake and benches for enjoying it. The cordwalk then turned and looped around through the dunes back toward the Nature Center. We had it all to ourselves, and read the interpretive signs about the plant community which included poison ivy, so stay on the trail! Also prevalent was wormwood, goat's beard, orange hawksweed and tons of milkweed. The park is one of the stops for the migratory monarchs, so maybe we'll come back in August and try to catch sight of them.

After two hours of biking around the park we decided to drive into Sheboygan for lunch at the Brisco County Wood Grill where the river empties into Lake Michigan. It had a sports bar type of interior, which I'm not a fan of, but the food was EXCELLENT! I don't eat out very often because vegetarian options that are fit to eat are hard to come by, but they make a killer mediterranean salad. I got it with the grilled chicken, and the chicken was so tasty that I ate that too! I had wanted the southwest chicken wraps because they had black beans, but they were pre-wrapped so I couldn't omit the chicken and they were deep fried as well. I just don't like deep fried food except for the occasional order of french fries. Wayne had the seafood linguini and pronounced it delicious also.  When we were done eating we walked out their back door right onto the boardwalk and spent the next two hours exploring the lakefront area. There was lots to see from shops and restaurants to kayakers, fishing boats, ducks, the Coast Guard building, the Yacht Club, Marina and of course the lighthouse, not to mention the crowds of folks out enjoying the beautiful June weather we're having.

 

On Friday morning we went for a short bike ride and then hiked the Woodland Dunes Trail which had signs describing some of the trees in the woods. I'm terrible at tree identification, and these guys were so tall that the plaques weren't too helpful since the leaves were too far away to see! The park also offers boating, fishing, and swimming and has playgrounds and a bathhouse available also. It's easy to see why it fills early and weekends are booked in advance, so we'll have to plan our next visit ahead of time if we want to stay longer. I had wanted to come back Sunday night by myself since Wayne was working doubles this weekend and Monday is my birthday, but I'm going to go to Kettle Moraine Southern Unit instead. I've hiked most of this park but never stayed overnight, so I'll get a chance to hike the trails on the other end of the park as a gift to myself.

I'm a Volunteer!

All winter I was hoping that I'd be able to start volunteering at a Wisconsin State Park this year. A few weeks ago I offered my services at Big Foot Beach State Park when I was there hiking, and Ranger Matt welcomed me on board. They need some help with their flower gardens, so that's where I'm starting. I'm willing to do any outside work, so we'll see what else I end up being assigned to as the season goes on. I should get lots of sun and lots of exercise, and I'm excited to be helping out instead of just sitting at home trying to come up with things to do.

beautiful Lake Geneva is just across the street

The top picture shows the bed I started in on Monday after about three hours of weeding. You can see the areas that I stripped with my bare hands to get all the roots. The bottom picture shows a section I hadn't weeded yet. In five hours I got about 80% of the bed done. Quite a few cars stopped and asked me questions about the park and about the area because there is only one ranger on duty during the week and he was out making his rounds in his truck and not at the gate house. But the best part of my day was when the families walked down from the campground and I got to talk to the kids about their plans to go fishing or swimming. While weeding, I made friends, too.

I spent half an hour on the internet trying to identify... help!

After voting this morning I went back for another quick hour of weeding, and I'll finish off that bed tomorrow morning before I go to work in the afternoon. Today a school group was there, and when a few of the kids who looked to be around 11 or 12 years old walked by with their chaperone the adult said, "This is a boardwalk. They call it that because it's made of boards and you can walk on it." I sure hope that wasn't the teacher because I would expect middle school kids to be able to figure that out by themselves, wouldn't you? To their credit they didn't comment and kept right on with their enthusiasm for being outside.

We realized yesterday that we both have Thursday and Friday off so we're hitching up and heading out to Kohler-Andrae State Park on Lake Michigan for 2 nights. It's a new park for us and only about 2 hours from home. As the recall election is winding down tonight, what comes next for Wisconsin is on my mind, and I'm hoping the DNR doesn't take any further hits to their budget. I know in other states around the country the parks systems have suffered, and I hope that Wisconsin's public lands aren't going to be on the chopping block. I received a card in the mail this week about the possibility of the government selling public lands and I hope that doesn't happen. Once our public lands are owned privately there's no going back. With that in mind, everybody open your wallet willingly when you buy those state and national park passes so we can continue to have those places to enjoy!

Adventures in Moving

On Friday Cory and I had to load up Katrina's bedroom furniture, our old couch and our old kitchen table with chairs into a UHaul and drive it up to Eau Claire. Wayne had to work so we were on our own, and it didn't get off to the greatest start when I arrived to pick up the UHaul without my purse. I was so busy trying to get everything organized that I forgot the most important thing! By the time we went back again we'd lost an hour, but we got the truck loaded pretty quickly and were on our way by 3:00 for our 4 1/2 hour drive.

 After we helped her unload her things and get them into her home for the year we drove to Lake Wissota State Park in Chippewa Falls. Cory decided he'd rather stay with me instead of at Katrina's house so we could get on the road early. We didn't get there until after 10:00 so I had to set up my new tent cot in the dark while Cory settled into his luxurious accommodations in the back of the Vibe. I bought the tent cot so I could go camping this summer when Wayne was working since I only work part-time.

 

  

  

Wayne and I had been to Lake Wissota when we moved Katrina up to her dorm 2 years ago, but hadn't really spent any time exploring the park. The lake is a 6300 acre man-made lake and is popular for fishing, canoeing and kayaking. I got up at 6:00 am to go for a walk on the Lake Trail which ran right behind our campsite. I walked down to the beach area, enjoying the solitude and quiet since most campers were still in bed.

We were on the road by 8:30, heading for Madison. We stopped at Whole Foods for some non-perishable groceries, and as usual I snacked my way through the store!  Our next stop was the Henry Vilas Zoo, where I was hoping to get some good shots after being inspired by some photos taken by Erin from Two To Travel. The zoo was crowded and half the exhibits were closed, which was disappointing. I specifically wanted to try to see the flamingos with their eggs, but was not as lucky as Erin was. There was a group on a mound of dirt that was in a difficult location to see, the mid-day light was harsh, and some fencing was obstructing most shots I tried to take. The weekend didn't really come together the way I had planned, but sometimes that's how it goes. I've decided it's actually easier to shoot wild animals...who knew? I got a few shots of the flamingos squabbling with each other, and I humbly offer my best attempt below.