May 17-18, 2014, Governor Dodge State Park, Dodgeville, WI   

Well, the weekend started of with a bang as my back went out again on Friday night. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go camping, but I figured if I could finish packing, then I would probably be good to go. Also, I wasn’t sure I could sit around the house all weekend either. I really wanted to get out again, so I mustered up the will to hobble through the packing, and we made it out exactly at our planned time of 10am.

We drove around the park looking at campsites in the Cox Hollow campground, where we’ve stayed several times before. We landed on site 69 since it had a number of nice trees for rigging the tarp and was available. We also considered sites 72, 34?, …(I need to do a better job remembering these). We set up right away and had Mountain House Beef Stew for lunch. After dealing with some sassy behavior, we took the kid to see Stephen’s Falls, which she’d been asking to do even though she was probably 4 the last time we were there. The falls were nice, but it was unbelievably crowded, including a group of rambunctious teenagers who thought nothing of disregarding posted signs to stay on the trails. After getting some photos, we made a second, longer stop at the spring house, which was used as a refrigeration house prior to available electricity. Our daughter seemed quite intrigued by it, but it was probably more the aspect of walking on partially rocks than it was the history.

After the springs, we headed down to the Cox Hollow Lake boat ramp to launch the canoe. The kiddo was whining that “we always go canoeing, everyday…” If only that were true!! We offered the reward of playground time for good behavior, which turned out to be a good deal for everyone. The other good idea was to let her bring a toy on a string. She has a foot-long yellow canoe that I tied to a string with a loop for her wrist, and this amazingly kept her quite occupied. We basically canoed the whole lake perimeter, but I forgot to stop the gps tracking, so I haven’t yet figured out how far we paddled. We saw a number of geese who must have had offspring in the cliffs because they were none to happy with our presence. We also saw a swimming mammal that was hard to make out, but it was probably a muskrat. I’ll have to ask the wife what other birds we saw. It was a nice paddle, and we only briefly encountered gusts of wind that made paddling difficult. The only downside was my achy back.

For supper, we had cheese and chicken quesadillas. Not bad, but the foil packaged chicken is a far cry from the grilled stuff we might have at home or Qdoba. Hot sauce helped kick it up a notch. I think we plan on having something like this on one of our longer expeditions, but we need to find hot sauce in plastic packages and a means of grating our own cheese. We finished the evening off with a nice fire and roasted marshmallows for the ladies. Surprisingly, I slept great despite my back. The Exped Synmat and Big Agnes Summit Park sleep system really is amazing.

I started Sunday off with our usual oatmeal and bacon. I was going to write that we started our Sunday with the oatmeal and bacon breakfast, but I imagine the wife was up for at least a few hours before I rolled (painfully crawled) out of the tent at 8am. She went through a bundle of wood before I woke. After breakfast, we debated the day’s activities. I was feeling incredibly stiff and sore, so the ladies spent some time at the park while I started breaking camp. By 11, we headed out for a short paddle on Twin Valley Lake. Instead of the toy canoe, the kiddo decided to bring a 6” Gumby toy to which I had similarly tied a string. Unfortunately, Gumby doesn’t float, and is resting at the bottom of the lake. Tears, sadness and Dad’s sore back ended this paddle after 1.7 miles. We decided against having lunch there, so we broke camp and headed home after a quick stop at Subway.