Lunch stop at Fireman's Park in Cottage Grove with cheese and crackers.

And new bike pants :-)

The roads east of Cottage Grove were amazingly quiet and free of traffic. We loved biking on them!

It was a beautiful and sunny day.

We arrived at the camp ground. Here is the where boats go to enter Mud Lake.

Megan's new tent from REI--after the Devil's Lake Flooding Disaster we decided this was the way to go..

Our tent was between old oaks.

Here is a Red Admiral caterpillar (Vanessa atalanta). Thomas and Megan were hiking along, and Thomas said "You often find Red Admiral caterpillars in leaves like these" and he found one immediately.

It was a real treat to hike out on the boardwalk to see Mud Lake. There were signs about the water snake. We did not see one to Thomas's disappointment, but this may have been because Megan's loud foot stomping served its purpose to scare them away.

Thomas was delighted to spot a Mourning Dove in a tree above our campsite.

Another angel hair with pasta sauce dinner.

After dinner, we took an evening bike trip into down town Lake Mills.

Thomas's knee was bothering him, so we picked up some jello to help it heal. We enjoyed the sunset at Sandy Beach on the south end of Rock Lake.

The entrance to our spendid campground.

Morning.

We stopped for cheese steak sandwhiches and ice cream at a unique cafe in Deerfield.

Thomas loves road kill. Here is a Viceroy (Limenitis archippus).

Here is a Milbert's Tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti).

A hill on the way back to Madison.

Here we are arriving back in Madison!

Read the full story below:

We rode our bikes 83 miles to Lake Mills, WI, and back again. Megan gave Thomas an early birthday present of a bike computer, so now we can accurately report how many miles we go.
It was a wonderful trip! We left by 11:30 am Saturday. We started by going through Madison and Thomas got to enjoy the cool east side of town. Then there was a lot of traffic on our way to a small town, Cottage Grove, so we stuck to the sidewalk when possible instead of the bike lane. We had a great picnic under some huge trees at Fireman's Park in Cottage Grove. Then we continued on to Lake Mills, and the roads were amazingly quiet, narrow, and free of all traffic, and in nature. It was relatively flat, and the sun was abundant. On our way to Lake Mills, we were going up a hill and Thomas was a bit ahead of Megan. Megan saw a man leaned over hammering on his mailbox, and almost his entire b-u-u-u-t showed. Megan had to try very hard not to laugh, and Thomas later told Megan that he knew she'd be laughing when she saw that.
A man in a very, very fancy car stopped to ask us if we needed directions, and asked Thomas if he was from Austria or Germany, based on his accent. Thomas thought he'd just stopped to show off his car, but really bikers are not the people who would be impressed by a shiny, red, $100,000 sports car.
Finally, we arrived at our campground, Sandhill Station State Campground. We rode straight to Mud Lake, and Thomas immediately was thrilled by finding the Viceroy butterfly (this looks like the monarch but is not poisonous and is totally unrelated to the monarch). And then we found our campsite. It was very nice, in an oak savanna field, but our site was so sunny and it was 84 degrees F. We put up Megan’s brand new tent. The tent is amazing! It has two doors, two huge vestibules for your gear and shoes, and 4 pockets for stuff inside the tent, plus a ceiling loft. A great buy! Luckily, we did not have to test it with rain this weekend, but maybe some day we will and we think it will pass the test.
We grabbed a snack and went to explore mud lake some more. On the way to the lake Thomas saw some plants and a leaf shaped a certain way, and grabbed it and said that we'd find a caterpillar in it. He peeled the leaf apart, and sure enough, there was a Red Admiral caterpillar! (That's genus Vanessa). There was a boardwalk out to the lake, and a sign informing us about the "healthy" population of water snakes, and not to kill them because they are harmless. Megan stomped very hard so the snakes would run away, and luckily did not find any. Thomas wanted to see one. He still talks about them.
When we went to get water for drinking and cooking dinner, we found brown well water coming from the faucet. Well, we didn’t have a lot of other options, so we went ahead and drank it. It did not make us sick, but I’m sure we are not lacking in minerals after swigging all that brown liquid.
We cooked a wonderful spaghetti dinner, and then we decided to explore more of Lake Mills.
We rode down town, grabbed some ice cream and Jello (Thomas was having some knee pain and gelatine helps it), and headed for the Sandy Beach on Rock Lake to see the sun set.
We observed a big bird in the field flying off as we returned to camp.
We then enjoyed some whisky (Megan learned this from her dad), and passed out quickly. Megan enjoyed her new pink Thermarest sooooo much! But, at 3 am Megan awoke to Thomas having an allergy attack. The pollen was very bad and he could not breathe. Luckily an overdose of allergy pills got him through the night. Megan went out to go to the bathroom and the stars were amazing--so bright!
The next morning was slow--Megan got a lot of reading done. Thomas was feeling lethargic from all of the allergy pills and his knee hurt, but eventually we made it out on the road again by 12:30 and Thomas’s knee was doing well (apparently Jello does help!).
I was craving steak ever since Lo's birthday dinner, and we managed to find a totally awesome cafe in the small town of Deerfield which had cheese steak sandwiches. Awesome! They were SOOOO good. We also enjoyed chocolate shoppe ice cream for dessert. As we were biking along again, Thomas found some wonderful road kill that he took home with him in a plastic container. Don't worry, it was just a Viceroy (see picture) and a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, two species that were not in his collection yet.
We found an alternate route back to Madison, avoiding the road with traffic, and experiencing some wonderfully scenic and more quiet and safe roads.
We also caught some nice skyline views of Madison on our way back (see picture). After returning to Madison, we went to our favorite pizza place, glass nickel, and really enjoyed our Guinness and Socre Blue and Cardiac Arrest pizza.
So overall it was a huge treat to go on another bike trip. Megan’s highlights were Mud Lake and the boardwalk and the campground and quiet roads, her new tent, thermarest, reading, and the cafe with the cheese steak. Thomas’s highlights were the new butterfly species, the food (including the steak and the pasta), and Mourning Dove duet with the Cardinal at the campground, and that his knee stopped hurting. Oh and of course above all we enjoyed each other's company!