Our Friday night site at Elroy Campground. We had the campground to ourselves.

A farm animal scene on our bike ride to Wildcat.

Thomas found some great road kill.

Thomas spotted this on a guard rail as we walked our bikes up a steep mountain near the entrance to Wildcat Mountain State Park.

Cliff on Wildcat Mountain.

We made it past the cliff.

The start of a hike.

We were all set to hike up Mt. Pisgah.

Unfortunately the trail was closed.

Canoers on the Kickapoo River.

View back by the cliff.

Our campsite near the entrance to the park. It was a ghost site, and only available for people in situations like ours (arriving on bikes without reservations, to save the $10 surcharge on a $12 site).

Wildflower.

Scenic Outlook.

Porcini musrhooms.

Hazy sunset views.

Back at our site, I had to wear my jacket to keep the mosquitos from bothering me.

The poop caterpillar.

The Sheep.

Biking home.

Horses!

Flowers.

A church where I stopped for some headache medicine.

There cows ran along while we biked.

More scenes from our bike trip back to Elroy.

Read the full story below:

We quickly ate burritoes from Qdoba Friday before driving 2 hours northwest to Elory.
We had the Elory campground to ourselves again. We managed to get our tent up just before dark. We brought a cooler packed with beers and each had 1.5 beers at the picinic shelter.

Saturday we got up and decided to go to a local cafe for breakfast. After eggs, meat, american fries, toast, and caffeine, we got ready to bike. There was a guy parked next to us who was planning to bike 60 miles to La Crosse. We had 20 miles planned to Wildcat Mountain. But our 20 miles were very hilly and a great workout. It was very sunny, but luckily Thomas made it without heat stroke. We left around 11 AM and made it to our destination at 2:30 PM. There were no sites at Wildcat Mountain left, but "for people in our situation" there was a "ghost" site right by the entrance with a picnic table, fire pit, poison ivy, and on slanted land so it was hard to find a flat spot for our tent, but we managed to find one under a tree. (There is a rule in Wisconsin if you arrive by bike, the state parks must reserve a site for your, which is great, especially because we save the $10 reservation fee for the $12 sites).  Our site was right by the entrance, and right at the top of the hill by the entrance, so a lot of motorcycles and trucks made a ton of noise coming up the hill near our site. But we were further away from the other sites so we didn't have to listen too much to our neighbors drinking all night or fighting.

We were dead from the heat and the hills. Thomas made two cups of instant cofee and we gobbled down latvian bread with swiss cheese, and a bunch of chocolate covered raisens (our new favorite bike trip snack). Thomas enjoyed the bread very much, and also the piragis. He sliced the bread and froze it, so we can thaw some for each bike trip. We relaxed and read and fell asleep. At around 6 PM we started out on a hike. We walked down some huge hills to the Kickapoo River, where there were a lot of canoers. We planned to climb Mt. Pisgah (1200 ft), but unfortunately the trail was closed. It must have been due to flood damage. There seemed to be a lot of landslides and debree left over from the Wisconsin floods.
We headed back up to our site, and luckily the big lookout point was still available to look out at. We stopped at a nature center, and got some 50 cent cans of pop to go with our raspberry vodka.
We made our typical angel hair with vodka sauce dinner, and enjoyed our drinks.
Sunday we woke up and slowly got ready. We left at 11:15 AM and made it to the car by 2:30 PM. There was a TON of traffic on the interstate (everyone goes "up north" to their summer cottages on weekends and returns Sunday). We decided to take an alternate route home, on county highways that were just as fast as the interstate, but with much less traffic. We also stopped at Starbucks for smoothies, that were not as good as they had been advertised.

Now we are home and very excited to go on more trips! Thomas gave Wildcat Mountain state park a 10 out of 10 for nature, since he saw so many butterflies. He took home a caterpillar that looked like poop (it tries to look like bird poop on the leaves so predators don't eat it), and one that looked like the sheep (Banshee, it had white fur).
Thomas woke up to coyotes howling at night, and he saw a racoon at our site (something bit into our garbage sack near the picnic table, but luckily nothing got into our food sack hung in the woods). You may have noticed that Thomas got a new bike shirt, that is bright for safety and light colored to help Thomas stay cool.
Thomas saw three swallowtail butterfly species on this trip, including the Giant Swallowtail. The Blue Jay family woke us up in the morning. We also saw an Indigo Bunting.
Also, it was amazing how little traffic there was on our route. Other than a few annoying motorcyles, we had the roads to ourselves.