Camping? Yes

Tracy and I went camping. Yep, real camping. Last time that happened we still had a pop up camper. Not this time. She made the mistake of saying she would camp if she had a bigger tent. The 3 man we have is just not enough room for her. I scoured the clearance at REI and found a 6 man tent for a reasonable price last winter.

Just having the tent wouldn't do it, so back in February I went online and made reservations at one of the most popular parks in the state, Devil's Lake.

After half a year rolls by the weekend to go is upon us. She's not even trying to backout.

Friday I packed the car and strapped the boats to the roof and off we went.

We made it to the park, checked in, got our site and set up the tent. Time for dinner. To break everyone in a little more gradually, we drove into Baraboo and had a fish fry at a local restaurant. It wasn't too bad and we headed back to our site where we had a nice fire for the evening.

Typical of public parks the group across from had kids who did not talk, they only seemed to scream. Every 3 minutes a parent would try to get them to stop.  Eventually they must have either been gagged or fell asleep from exhaustion.

The next morning we got up, I made breakfast of eggs, coffee, cocoa and some entenmann's donuts I picked up in my grocery run the day before.

We cleaned up and headed back to the beach/picnic area where we would start a hike of the East bluffs of the park.  It had been nearly 20 years or so since the last time either of us were here.

We hiked for a few hours and put on about 4 miles or so. The weather was great but the crowds were heavy on the trails. Hell, they were heavy all over. It was a really nice weekend so the park was full of campers and day users.

We headed back to camp, had a quick bite and changed into swimwear. We then headed back to the lake with the kayaks. We put in and did a leisurely lap around the lake. Very interesting to see the bluffs from this angle and the huge rocks just underneath the water. Many boats on the water. 

We took our time getting back, soaking up the sun before we went back to our mostly wooded site. 

Made dinner of shrimp skewers and steaks cooked directly over the fire.  So good. We also did foil potato packages, like we used to do. They were ok, I must have remembered them as being better 20 years ago.

They now have a nice little camp store in the middle of the park. For things like marshmallows which I had forgot.

We relaxed with a fire and some adult beverages. The neighbors were much more subdued tonight. It was very relaxing.

The next morning I made breakfast again, pancakes and coffee. We slowly packed up and headed out. A very successful trip indeed. No dogs, no kids. no arguments, just some nice time together in the outdoors.

We are even talking about going once more in October.....