Kettles, Moraines, Kames, etc

We just spent a couple of days camping in the Kettle Moraine State Forest Northern Unit. It's a pretty spot north and west of Milwaukee. We stayed at Mauthe Lake. Our camp site reservations said that in the area we were booked in most of the sites were shaded by hardwood trees. What this really means is that of the 26 sites on our loop, 4 were out in the blistering sunlight. I'll leave it to you to decide whether Murphy's law kicked in or not. I will just say this; we were there with a friend and his son, and one of us had a great campsite with lots of shade and a great "back yard" that went down a hillside to a major walking trail, while the other had a nice rendition of a camp from Survivor Serengeti.

While we were there I did get to spend a little time working on the Wallaby. Here's a picture of a sleeve looking out of our tent. The sleeve and I were in the tent because the biting flies were just as interested in the shade as I was. If you've never been camping before you need to know that the temperature inside a tent can change extremely rapidly. Let's say that it's about 80F outside, but the clouds are covering the sun. In that case the tent will be very comfortable. Once the clouds blow away, however, it takes 2.6 seconds for the tent to turn into a sauna. Once the sleeve was long enough to join up with the body and his other sleeve friend, we took a break and walked the mile down to the lake where the rest of the party was.

We had a good time, even though we forgot to bring several things with us, or brought the wrong thing. It would have been nice to spend a few more days there, they have a lot of nice trails and a lot of glacial features. We went to the Ice Age Visitors center and watched part of a lovely (yawn) movie about how the glaciers formed much of the Midwest's landscape. We climbed Dundee Mountain (which is actually a kame) and the kids got to play in Mauthe lake. I think on a scale of 1 to 5 I'd give this trip 4 tents.