Devils Lake…yellow is so beautiful!! (10/26/2019)

We attempted to ‘Splore Devil’s Lake State Park the first week of October, but because of an all day rain across the entire state of Wisconsin, we had to postpone Splorin’ this park until later. The day after Mike’s 50th birthday was seemingly a great day to try Splorin’ here again….the park shouldn’t be that busy in the fall, right?

We started our Splorin’ day in Necedah, WI at the Little Crane Cafe. From reading the reviews of this restaurant on Google, we knew that the owner ran the restaurant the way she wanted — and she kind of had a sarcastic type personality. This was something that was right up our alley, so we were ready. The restaurant was awesome.

We sort of asked if a side salad was a possibility (knowing it probably wouldn’t be) and the waitresses response was almost exactly what we expected: “I don’t think she will do that”. LOL. We have our typical Veggie and Meatlovers type omelettes and they were very good. The coffee was actually pretty good too!! There was also an interesting table tent on each table that went along with our low carb/ no starches lifestyle:

I think the difference was about 50 cents, but I do think it makes a lot of sense. We don’t really remember any coffee klatches, but there were several people that appeared to be very local in attendance and the waitress really seemed to know everyone.

We then were off to Devil’s Lake and some awesome hiking!! Before we arrived at Devil’s Lake Mike decided to adjust the “The Plan” on the fly. Our goal is to visit all the state parks — there is a small state park just outside of Wisconsin Dells called Rocky Arbor State Park. There is only a mile or two of trails there, so while we were passing it we decided to make it back to that park AFTER doing Devil’s Lake and knock two of them out in one day. Woo hoo!!! We arrived at the South end of the lake and found that there was no attendant there and we had to pay for our daily pass with a credit card. Turns out the daily rates at this state park are higher than any other park in the Wisconsin system, oh well. We were ready to take on the park, let’s get this started. “The Plan” was first adjusted on Friday evening when Mike found a different way to Splore’ the park. The new plan was to do a loop on the East side of the lake and then one on the West side and then see what time we had left to do some additional trails. As you will see — this was blown all to heck. (just coming right out and saying it — no foreshadowing music necessary!)

The description of the first trail we were to take said that it would begin climbing elevation very quickly — and they were not lying. Upon getting onto the trail in the woods we immediately started the uphill climb and it didn’t relent until we were at the top. It was actually not too bad as the trail was mostly paved and was just a constant incline — thankfully there were hardly any steps. We popped out on the top to see a beautiful over look of the lake and the park below (and across the lake).

As you can see there was also this most beautiful woman at the top — the sites of the park and her were amazing!! We then ambled along the top of the bluff — many spots there were amazing views to be had. We were surprised by the number of people that we were seeing — we most definitely were not alone in this park. Before we started back down off the bluff we got a chance to see where we were headed — to the beach area.

We then began our descent — down many, many stone steps. Mike finds it much easier to go down the steps than up, but Tammy is undecided — either way they hurt her knees a bit. Just means there is more weight to be lost I guess. Again, we passed couple after couple and group after group of people. So many people had the same idea we had for this gorgeous Fall day.

We made it back down and began our return hike back to the parking lot where we parked. The return hike was through a boulder field at the bottom of the bluff that we just crossed. It was a really neat trail in that it was among the boulders, but we didn’t have to actually climb over the boulders as the path wound in between them all.

We made it back to the car and decided to take a quick break. Water, almonds and peanuts were had before we took off again.

This was supposed to be the loop on the West side of the lake. “The Plan” had us going up the Balanced Rock trail, across the top of the bluff, back through the woods bluff trail and back down the Potholes trail — however, “The Plan” was quickly thrown into mass chaos. As we began our way up the Balanced Rock trail, it was stone steps through the huge boulder field. It wasn’t that difficult climbing, but we ran into a lot of people coming down and we were constantly have to paused and step off the trail so people coming down could get past us. The stones steps trail did not leave lots of room to get out of the way — so sometimes we had plenty of room; other times we were leaning up against big boulders while they slid passed us. Little did we know over the next 30 to 60 minutes this would only get worse.

The higher we climbed on these steps the steeper it got and the more and more and MORE people we encountered that were coming down. It got to the point that we were waiting 5 minutes for the streams of people coming down. It would be one thing if we were just waiting for a several couples or a group of people, but for some reason every group/couple we saw had at least one dog! Some of these dogs were OK going down, but others appeared terrified. There were dogs of all sizes — Corgis, German Shephards, Labs, little ankle biters — it was crazy!! By the time we got to the top, we were so done with people. Tammy, who usually is the voice of reason and calm to Mike’s overreacting and being crotchety, was saying that she just wanted to be done. The number of people that we encountered was enough for us to alter “The Plan”. Rather than do the loop on top of the bluff and return back down the steps at the other end, we decided to continue down to the beach and go back to the car along the trail through the boulders again. It turns out this was a very good decision. As we made our way along the top of the bluff, we encountered hundreds of people. Far more people that we had ever encountered at a Wisconsin state park and even more than we saw at Umstead State Park in North Carolina — which we thought would be impossible. As we came down off the bluff we had to walk through the parking lot — it was completely full with quite a few cars looping waiting for a parking space. We also were able to see a line of cars waiting to purchases passes to get in — we would count 18 cars in line before the line curved around and out of sight (obviously there were more than 18). WOW!!

We made it back to the parking lot — but we were undeterred — we were going to have a good time, all these people be damned!!! Mike thought we would be able to find somewhere that would have fewer people. He thought that the majority of these people would think they had to be climbing the bluffs, boulders, etc. and were not just interested in taking a nice walk in the woods like we do. Off we headed towards the group camp — it was like taking Alka Seltzer — oh what a relief it was. We got off the beaten path — and the beauty, and quietness, of the trail was simply outstanding. Yellow quickly became our favorite fall color. There were so many pictures that could have been taken, these are just a couple.

Wow, the word beautiful doesn’t begin to cover it. Not more than 5 minutes down the trail and we were back in our happy place. The quiet and serenity were all it took to restore our sense of calm. We were glad to be Splorin’ again!!

Upon leaving Devil’s Lake and heading towards Rocky Arbor, we were ready for more. Surely there would not be too many people at the tiny Rocky Arbor State Park. We had read online that the park was officially “closed” but we were welcome to park at the gate and hike as much as we wanted. We arrived at the gate to see two other vehicles already parked there. That’s OK, two other groups there we think we could handle.

We thought this was just going to be a little park with a small nature trail — after all it is right off the freeway, how interesting could it be? We were very pleasantly pleased with this park!!! We immediately ran into some of the people that were already out on the trail, but they were done — so there was only one other group out there. This trail was kind of strange. We walked below some ledges on one side and above a swamp on the other. We passed a very large “balanced rock” in the middle of the swamp.

Going down around the ledges the views just kept on coming — the ledges had trees growing on top of them showing that trees can grow anywhere!

This was an amazing little park — we climbed up to the top of the ledges and made our way back passed the campground and back to the car. Upon getting back to the car – -there were 6 other cars in the lot now!!! Boy, this was an amazingly busy day for hiking!!!

We were then off to enjoy #SupperClubSaturday. We couldn’t wait. We were planning on going to Carlson’s Rustic Ridge right across the lake from Buckhorn State Park. It looked like a really nice place to eat. However, about 10 minutes from our arrival Tammy noticed on the website that this particular restaurant closed for the season on October 7th. ARGGHH!!! Both of us had looked at this and never saw that before. No matter — there was another one just up the road about 20 miles that we had seen before — The Dirty Oar Supper Club. This had to be better because it had “supper club” in the name, right? We had a difficult time finding the restaurant — due to road construction the road that takes you to the restaurant was listed as “closed” except to local traffic. We made our way along the detour, but Mike tried to get to the restaurant a couple of times only to keep seeing the road closed signs. Mike finally decided that we MUST be local traffic and kept going. We were worried that since it would be 5:30 when we arrived it might be difficult to get a table. We were very pleased to pull into the parking lot and only see about 7 or 8 other cars there — we were golden!!!

Or not. When we said that we didn’t have reservations we were told that they just seated several other tables without reservations and we could have a seat at the bar and they would see how fast they could get us a table. We sat at the bar and look at the many, many open tables trying to figure out why we couldn’t sit at one of them. The bartender let us in on the 411 — she said the the chef was there by himself and that he could only prepare meals for 18 people at a time, so they just had to stagger people to tables so that food would come out in a timely manner. We were OK with that explanation. Anyway, it was only about 15 minutes before we were seated. Dinner was very good, and the view was AMAZING. If you go to their website linked above, you will see they say they boast a “MILLION DOLLAR VIEW ON LAKE PETENWELL”. Holy cow, we think they are selling themselves short. We got to see one the most beautiful sunsets we have seen in a very long time.