Archive for October, 2008

This weekend at Devil’s Lake State Park the Aldo Leopold Half-Marathon and 5K run will take place. You can expect about 500 back country runners to be screaming along the trails.

For a bit of family fun you can head over to Mirror Lake State Park from 6:30 -8:30 pm for their annual Halloween Hike. This is a great time for families. There is a torch-lit 1 mile trail through the woods, 2 big bonfires and lots of food. I wrote a bit more about the Halloween Hike here.

Funny thing. I was just reading the Fall Colors comment over on the “official” conditions page. I realized that I had totally missed guessing at the state of the colors by “Grandpa’s bunions or the width of the band around a wool worm’s middle”. Well, that’s why they are the experts!!

I took off to Devil’s Lake early Saturday morning for a paddle around the lake.  The air temperature was just 30F when I drove along South Shore Rd.  The above picture is near the corner by Burma Rd.

This is an interesting view of the West Bluff as the fog was blown across the lake and then sailed up and over the bluff.

Alright, so it may not look like it in the photo but I think here in the Devil’s Lake area we’ve certainly past “Peak” color.  What that means is that if visit the park this weekend you’ll still see lots of nice colors, but you’ll also see shades slipping into browns.  I took this picture out on Stienke Basin.   It’s more colorful now deeper in the woods and going brown around the edges.

“Turnouts provide the opportunity to walk over 30 miles of great trails through colorful autumn-tinged birch, maple, and other trees-many with fabulous views of scenic Devil’s Lake,” says Barbara Dolezal, co-author of “The Most Scenic Drives in America.”

I came across this nice little mention at ForbesTraveler.com.  You can read the rest here.  All I can say is. . well, “What she said”.  And I should add that this is going to be a great weekend for it.  Lots of color today, sunny, temp around 78f. . . what more could you ask for!?

These paddlers were out on the lake a couple days ago while we were out hiking along the Tumbled Rocks trail at Devil’s Lake.

You’ll see the “look” of the website has changed.  I’m not a big fan of making too many changes, however as the technology moves on we have to stay with it.  As you probably know, we have 4 sites in our network of regional websites; DevilsLakeWisconsin.com, BarabooNow.com, MirrorLakeWisconsin.com and finally WisDells.net.  The goal is to get each site sort of looking like they belong together.  With this site done, & BarabooNow.com updated last week we’ve just got two more to go.  It would be exciting if it were not for all the work involved!  Oh well,  the main thing is to make sure to get out for a hike, bike ride, or paddle each day!