I have a couple of juvenile raccoons who seem intent on invading my camp site. I’ve chased them off half a dozen times, but they keep coming back, close enough that I could kick them if I tried. I have Pop-tarts and granola bars (fresh from the gas station) which will definitely have to be stowed under the seat of the scooter tonight.  I know this means that they’ll instead go after someone else’s stuff, but… I’m not about to sacrifice my breakfast just to maybe protect someone who didn’t prepare for wilderness.  

Despite the wind, today was definitely a better day than Monday. Even with frequent vehicles of various kinds on my tail – my scooter can go 60mph but I don’t like going over 40-45mph – and seas of corn or wheat on either side much of the time, it beats urban/suburban traffic. I’m hoping tomorrow will get even better. 

After dinner I still had time to go for another short hike along Lake Winnebago. It’s no Michigan, but it still does OK in the sunset department.   

I’d been paying attention to the sun/rain in the weather  forecast, but hadn’t noticed what kind of wind to expect. The answer: a persistent wind from the northwest. Which is a little bit exhausting when riding north across farmland. And that also means wind farms. This part of Wisconsin is littered with majestic wind turbines, and with good reason. 

It isn’t just that the headwind slows me down, it also adds to the noise, and requires pushing forward into it. And since it was also coming from the side, it was an ongoing buffeting to the side. I’ve learned how to deal with it, but it adds up to exhaustion. 

 
Eventually I made it to Lake Winnebago, the largest non-Great lake in Wisconsin. You can see across it in one direction, but not the long way.   
I got to High Cliff State Park at about 4pm, so about 8 hours on the road, including breaks. But unlike last night’s park, which is mostly just a fishing destination, High Cliff has interesting stuff to see. The name refers to the limestone cliffs at the edge of Lake Winnebago, which offer some good hiking and some outlooks of the lake. There’s a whole flock of hawks hunting in the area (at one point there were at least 25 of them overhead) and I tried getting some photos of them, but that’s really hard. The place deserves a day or more; I’ll be giving it a few hours. 

I ended up at another bar-and-grill for dinner, simply because it was only a few miles from the campground instead of several to the nearest proper restaurant. So it’s a brat-burger with cheese, chips, and a pint of … the house amber ale.   

My route today is generally pretty simple, heading mostly due north. So I actually have to make a little effort to avoid going in a straight line for dozens of miles. One nice exception was WI-67, a section of which was designated Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive. It was several miles of twisting left and right and up and down through some nice woods. 

I made it to Oconomiwoc at lunch time, and stopped at George Webb, a Wisconsin chain of diners. 

If I’m at Lake Geneva, I must be back in Switzerland, right? Or maybe it’s the one in Wisconsin.   

I got underway from Chain O’ Lakes at 8am, which seems to be becoming a pattern. In the past it’s usually been 9ish, but that’s Eastern Time, and I’m not going to adjust my natural patterns to accommodate time zones.

The territory is definitely nicer than yesterday, so far mostly county roads and cornfields. not quite as nice as woodland or lakeshore riding, but I’ll take it.

The sunset here wasn’t too shabby either.   

I was a little concerned that I’d get to Chain O’ Lakes State Park “too early”. Sure it was just 140 miles on the map, but without a lot of scenic places along the way for me to stop and gawk at, I might just keep riding and get there early afternoon. Especially since I’m still on Eastern Time and thus got a pretty early start. 

Not to worry. I got to the park at about 6pm Central Time, which makes for nearly 10 hours on the road. Of course that’s because I did stop along the way, and took plenty of time when I did. 

The roads got more to my liking as I got to the north of Chicago proper. Around Lake Zurich were some pretty nice ones … If not for the construction backups. Due to a few outright closures I relented and just took US-12 for the last 20ish miles. I try to avoid those kinds of letter-number roads, and this one was a bit of a racetrack, but not too bad. Ironically, US-12 was also the road that Indiana Dunes is on. But there’s no way I was going to stay on it the whole way. 

I had an annoyance as I was setting up the tent at the campground: only 6 stakes instead of 7. I can’t figure out how I lost one. But apparently I did. It’s more annoying in principle than in practice; the tent is pretty stable without it. (In fact it can get by with just 3 stakes, or just 2 if you don’t need the rain fly.)

On the other hand, I got lucky looking for a place to eat supper. I used an app called AroundMe to show me the nearest restaurants, all of which would require a good 6+ miles of backtracking from my camp site. Except that when I asked the app to tell me the actual distance to one of them, it said just 3 miles. It turns out there’s a back entrance to the park… sort of. I checked it out, and it’s blocked by a chained gate. But with a pedestrian opening, just big enough to push a scooter through. 🙂

So I’m at the Route 12  Bar & Grill, which is exactly what it sounds like. But in addition to an assortment of burgers and other sandwiches, they have a nice array of draft beers, from Bud Light to Guiness to several craft brews. I’m having Misfit IPA, which … I am too thirsty to judge objectively. 🙂 and a grilled BBQ chicken sandwich with tater tots on the side.