A Backpacking Trip On The Devils Lake And Sauk Point Segments Of The Ice Age Trail
Saturday, October 6 and Sunday, October 7, 2007 - Training for an attempt to thru-hike the Ice Age Trail in 2008
Hi,
Wow! Spectacular! These words don't do justice to what we experienced on the Ice Age Trail this weekend. Being early October and in Wisconsin one can anticipate frost and even snow flurries. Not this weekend, we had temperatures in the mid to upper eighties. The sky was mostly sunny with occasional white fluffy clouds accompanied by cooling breezes. What was baffling to us was the lack of mosquitoes, on Saturday we encountered zero and on Sunday maybe a handful, never even thought about breaking out the insect repellent. At the start of the hike we contemplated jettisoning our long underwear, hats, and gloves but didn't since we tried to simulate the backpack weight we will have on our attempt to thru hike the Ice Age Trail next year. It was another learning opportunity for us, mostly me, we needed a place to park our car Saturday night so early in the morning at the intersection of Highway DL and Bluff Road we saw a man working on his boat so we stopped and asked if we could park our van in his drive for the night, he was very nice and accommodating in letting us park near his house. I guess it demonstrates that in general people do like to help out, something that we are going to depend on if we are to complete a thru-hike of the Ice Age Trail. The scenery was out of this world, Parfreys Glen State Natural Area and Devils Lake State Park, two of Wisconsin's gems, words cannot do justice in describing them so I will let the following photos do the talking.
Happy Trails!
Dan
Below is a map of the area that we hiked -
(Click on individual picture to enlarge)
dps