A Bloy and his Blog

Yesterday I returned home from a camping trip to Wildcat Mountain State Park. Because I was so involved with moving to my condo last fall, I haven’t been camping since last August. It was great to finally spend some time in out in nature recharging my batteries.

I ended up doing a lot of hiking. Saw quite a few animals (including deer, wild turkeys, hawks and a lot of migrating songbirds) and some pretty nice scenic vistas.

One interesting thing I discovered is there are a lot of Amish people living in the area surrounding the park. After I saw a number of their horse and buggies driving along the rural highway, I really started to think about modern life. Here I am going to the country to recharge my batteries and get away from it all, while they’re living the simple life there all the time. Oh, I’m sure the Amish have their difficult and stressful times, but I doubt any of them are complaining about not having enough time for things.

One of the best things about being in this area of Wisconsin are hearing the loons calling at night. There’s nothing like falling asleep while listening to that haunting wail they make. One night I woke up about 3am (my bladder was calling me). After I finished my urgent business I must have stayed awake 20 minutes or so listening to the loons. No, they weren’t keeping me awake, I wanted to just lay in my sleeping bag and listen.

I just returned from a camping vacation at the Northern Highland/American Legion State Forest in northern Wisconsin. Below is a picture from the Plum Lake Hemlock Forest State Natural Area. It’s a nice hike from where I was camping at Star Lake.

read the rest of: Star Lake camping

I spent all last week in the great outdoors, camping at Perrot State Park. It was the first time I was at Perrot and I was pretty impressed.

read the rest of: Camping at Perrot State Park

I still haven’t had an opportunity to get out hiking on my snow shoes this year and a few weeks ago I was still wishing for some winter weather. Yesterday I got a Cabela’s catalog in the mail. As I was flipping through it and drooling over the new camping stuff they had, I realized that now I’m ready for warmer weather (which of course means that we’ll probably get some serious cold weather with lots of snow). I figure I’m maybe 2-3 months away from my first camping trip of 2002. Who knows, if the predictions for an El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific are correct, maybe sooner than that.