Devil's Lake State Park - Baraboo WI
Written on: Sun, Sep 14th 2008, 21:05
Took a weekend vacation to Devil's Lake State Park right near Baraboo WI. Unfortunatley, the weather was not in our favor this weekend and we got rained and misted on the majority of the weekend. We were still able to get in some very nice hikes around the lake, but I was really looking forward to doing some bouldering rock climbing, but couldn't do to the slippery rocks.
We made our reservations on ReserveAmerica.com, and got a campsite in the Ice Age campground. All the campsites were secluded by surrounding trees and were rather spread out. The sites in the Quarzite area were laid out in a field with little to no cover so we were very pleased with the location of our camp site, although it was positioned rather far from the lake. Going through ReserveAmerica hover did result in a $10 reservation free, topped onto the $15 a night campsite fee. Also, if you do not have a Wisconsin State Park pass, you will have to purchase one those, at $7 a day, or $26 for a year.
Me and my girlfriend arrived at the park on Friday afternoon and set up our tent. The park was still damp from rain earlier that day. On Friday we hiked along the West Bluff of the lake which brings you up pretty high above the lake and lets you see the park from a very high distance.
On Saturday we did a 4-5 miles look of the East Bluff Trail and saw the balanced rock and the Devil's Doorway. The Bluff trails are nicely paved and offer a very scenic view that overlooks Devil's Lake. The wooded trails are also very nice and offer less of a view, but more cover from the rain and sun, which was nice this weekend.
On Sunday we hiked around the entire lake doing both the east and the west bluff trails which ended up being aroudn 3-4 miles and took a little over 2 hours for us to do.
Although the weather wasn't too favorable, we still had a very enjoyable time hiking around the park, and didn't get too wet since the trails were covered well by overhanging trees.
Back at the campsite we were able to start a fire up Friday night, but due to the web conditions we couldn't get one started on Saturday. We were able to make s'mores, and had spaghetti and couscous for dinner each night.
My tent held up pretty well, so we stayed relatively dry over the wet wet weekend.
Images
