Hiking Wisconsin Meets Tourist’ing
One of the first things we do when we move to a new location is get onto AllTrails and see what kind of hiking is available. In Wisconsin, the top three hiking trails in the state are all located in Devil’s Lake State Park. This put the park high on the list of places to check out. Bonus points were that the park itself is located just south of Wisconsin Dells. Amity has told me many stories about The Dells, and everything I have seen is that it is the Wisconsin version of Branson, Missouri. Sounds like a solid way to spend a day exploring a new zone and channeling our inner tourist.
Mile: 67,494
Quote of the Blog: “Jobs will fill your pockets, but adventures will fill your soul.” - Jamie Lyn Beaty
Song of the Blog: “Runnin’ with the Devil” - Van Halen
Devil’s Lake State Park is just under two hours of drive time away from Fond du Lac. We made the drive early in the morning. We were surprised by the vibe at the state park when we got there. People had a party atmosphere along the lake shore, all the volleyball pits had people playing in them, and all kinds of music could be heard coming from all the groups enjoying the sunny day. We had the goal of hiking to some unique rock formations. One is known as Balanced Rock, and the other is Devil’s Doorway. We used ChatGPT to come up with a hiking plan for us. The plan I got included 13 miles of hiking to see the area, while Amity’s had 6 miles of hiking and got to the best views while cutting out all the extra hiking in the woods. We went with Amity’s.
Our hike started with some stairs that had been made out of a boulder field at the base of the bluff we were hiking to the top of. It is nice to be back hiking! We haven’t done any real hiking since we were living in New Hampshire before last winter. The views of the lake and surrounding state park got better and better as we climbed in elevation. The trail was really busy, and we both felt bad for the dogs on trail. It was a pretty steep climb on uneven steps, so the dogs were trying to climb down at their speed as the people holding their leashes were going much slower and more gingerly. For being a nice day and the area being known as the best hiking in the state, it was not crazy busy. We were able to get away from people as we hiked throughout the day. We did see some amazing hiking personalities and clothing options. The best was a man hiking while carrying a wooden picnic tote in western wear with cowboy boots, tank top, and a hat. He definitely got the Instagram shot!
The first landmark on the hike was Balanced Rock. We took a couple of pictures while taking the view in. The lake and surrounding hills make for a beautiful landscape. Not your standard Midwestern views. The balancing rock was pretty cool. Amazing to think about the odds that nature would create something like this, and that we are around to witness it. We continued on our hike further up the bluff. This is where we started to move away from people and get some space. We got to the top of the bluff and the trail flattened out. Dotting the trail were overlooks and cliff tops. These gave some amazing views and some thrilling spots to stand on the edge and look down. Amity kept her distance and insisted that I “get back from the edge right now!”
The next landmark was the Devil’s Doorway. As we came down into this feature, we came back into the crowds of people. This group was full of much dumber individuals than the rest of the people we had seen hiking. People were hiking around on the rock feature like it was a climbing gym, while neglecting the fact that they were not roped in and about 100 feet above a boulder field. I like to have fun and take risks, but the things I saw here were just pure stupidity! The Devil’s Doorway is a natural arch made of what looks like several large rocks perfectly balanced along one another. We got our pictures, did some people-watching, and got out of there before we saw someone do something really stupid and fall. We continued our hike along the bluff to complete a loop. As we continued, we saw several people doing some real rock climbing and rappelling. This was the most climbing ropes I have seen set up in a single place at once. There had to have been around two dozen routes set up for people to climb. We were impressed! The trail continued back down the boulder field and back to the lakeshore. We relaxed around the lake for lunch. We were really enjoying the people-watching. As we said, it was a vibe at the beach today! It looked like everyone was having a fantastic day!
Next up on the day was to head up to Wisconsin Dells to do some tourist’ing. On our way from the lake up to The Dells, we passed the small town of Baraboo, Wisconsin. What on the map looks like another sleepy little rural town is far from it. We passed the Barnum & Bailey’s Circus Museum. We quickly learned they had lived here while the circus was touring. This place had to be quite the funky little town—from all the characters that a circus brings in to the wide range of animals from around the world living there. We also drove past the International Clown Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, it was already late in the day and we didn’t have time to check it out, but now that we know about this town, we will be back!
The Dells is advertised as the Waterpark Capital of the USA. We passed two waterparks and one roller coaster park before we even made it downtown, and that accounted for only 10% of the total waterparks in town. Our plan was to park downtown and just walk around, get some food, and find some activities to do. Driving into downtown Wisconsin Dells was exactly what I expected. At one point, I was telling Amity, “It’s exactly like Branson, just without the upside-down house.” I immediately turned the corner to see a gigantic upside-down house with gigantic Transformer statues “breaking” out of the walls. We both died laughing!
Parking was a lot easier than we thought it would be and gave us a great location right next to the train station for the Empire Builder line to Montana. It was also a prefect location for being able to explore around the town. We started with going down the Riverwalk route. This was a short walk along a riverside park. We didn’t go too far, as we had already hiked for the day and there wasn’t a ton to see. We did find some pretty flowers along the walk. We then headed along the main downtown walk. There was some kind of variety of a tourist trap door after door—from escape rooms, to fudge shops, and your standard gift shops. We found the local cheese shop and had to take part in the obligatory cheese samples! We were already too stocked up on curds to get anything new, but the aged cheddar was bomb! We did our best to check out a couple of gift shops before finding the ice cream parlor! It was called Huckleberry’s Ice Cream! The name alone had us! It was a cool little ice cream shop, and the ice cream was great! We then made our way down to some putt-putt we found while driving into town. It was Pirate’s Cove Mini Golf. They have these everywhere, but this spot boasted 91 holes of putt-putt! I was sold on at least 72 holes, but Amity was only in for 18, so we only played one of their five courses. We picked the “hardest” of them all. It wasn’t too difficult, but did have some challenging holes. It wouldn’t have been a complete round of mini golf if we didn’t get a hole in one, which Amity did on the 13th hole!!! Overall, we had a blast playing there.
We wanted to end our day with a drink and some fun at the casino that is advertised for Wisconsin Dells, but when we looked to see where it was, it happened to also be in Baraboo. So, we changed our plans and headed down to the Riverside Pub we had seen while walking along the river. This gave us a great deck to relax on and enjoy the views. It was a great spot to wrap up another great day of exploring in Wisconsin. As we have learned along our travels, there are surprises along the way that we have yet to find. Baraboo, WI is one of them, and we now have another spot to put on our short list of upcoming adventures. As for Wisconsin Dells, we came, we saw, we got out of there! As much as it reminded Amity of Branson when she was a kid, the only reason I see us coming back is for their Oktoberfest—if we are still in Wisconsin!