The car at our site at Blue Mound State Park

Breakfast

Wooly Bear

Biking uphill

Mountains in Wisconsin

Lunch break

Scenic quiet roads

Blue Mound in the distance

Blue Mound again in the distance. We started our trip at Blue Mound and biked this far away.

Typical dairy farm in Wisconsin

Fall colors

Out site at Governor Dodge State Park

Morning fog

Sheeps!

The edge of the lake at Gover Dodge

Horse

Happy Halloween

Read the full story below:

Friday after work we drove to Blue Mound State Park, only about a half hour drive west of Madison. There was a long line at the entrance. Megan had been warned by her co worker that there was a 12 hour mountain bike race at the park that weekend. Luckily, there were still a few sites left, and we ended up in the exact same site as we had on the 4th of July this year (when it had been the last site available). The site was great, wooded, and probably only vacant because it was so close to the pit toilets. Luckily the wind wasn't blowing anything bad to us.

We enjoyed some Great Lakes beer before going to bed early (Thomas actually stayed up a little later listening to Swedish radio with his world receiver--you get a great signal being at the highest point in this part of Wisconsin).

We slept super late Saturday morning--10 AM. It was hard to get moving, but it was a beautiful morning, and we knew we had time.

We set off at 12:30 AM. We had to park our car by the park's shop, and there was little shade so it was SOO hot and sunny packing you'd think it was still July.

We had a beautiful route, very hilly but there were lots of trees and it was so nice. We stopped at a public hunting/fishing ground for lunch. We had German bread that Thomas's dad brought! Across the street, a guy was mowing his lawn. He came up to us and let us know that he had mowed a spot near the creek if we wanted to get further away from the road. So friendly!

We made to the park around 5 PM, and it was a whole new experience for Thomas. The last time we'd been there, we had stayed at a backpacking spot 4 miles from the entrance. This time, all of the backpacking spots (only 0.5 miles of lugging the bike on the path) were taken, so we took a completely different 2 mile road to our site. There are two huge man made lakes made from damming the river at the park, so we got to see one of them on our ride to our site. The place was packed, and we ran in to the most traffic of the entire trip at this state park.

We enjoyed some pop and vodka that we'd picked up at the store across the street from the park, and we had another early night to bed with the sun going down so early now.

Sunday we awoke to fog and everything was wet. We set off at around 11 AM. It turned out to be another sunny and beautiful day. The last hill up to Blue Mound was SOOO steep we walked part of it. It was a great work out.

Thomas's highlights were all of the butterflies--he saw at least 11 species. Megan spotted a sheep caterpillar as she walked in the campground and told Thomas which campsite number she had seen the sheep at. He ran to the campsite, found the caterpillar, and then when hunting for some food for it, he found several other "sheeps".

He also saw a Diana Fritillary for the first time--a very rare sighting.

7 hours and 35 minutes were spent biking, 64.6 miles were biked, and the average speed was 8.5 mph (give us a break, we were biking in the mountains).