Near Death x2

Sunday, July 17th, 2005 | Uncategorized

Today having my friend Dan visiting for a couple days we decided our time would be best spent at Devil’s Lake. Yes I know, I seem to go there once a week, but it’s one of Wisconsin’s few paradise spots.

It was bloody #$%^&*@ hot today, and we had to take my car (that has no A/C) since I am the only one with a State Park Pass. Well we were only about 5 miles or so from Devil’s Lake. I am driving and some guy in a nice convertible decides not to pay any attention to the road at ALL and just drives out in the middle of the road (I was driving perpendicular to him and going probably 50mph).

I see him and I slam on the breaks, but I am not sure if he is going to cross the street, backup or stay still, I mean at first he was going to cross so I veered my car to the left so he could get across, but then he stopped dead in the middle of the road so let off, and re-brake to pull it back to the right and I managed to stop my car without hitting his.

I look at the guy and his passengers and he just has an “oops look” and says “Sorry, my fault”. I guess I am glad to know my breaks work and that my reaction time is good when needed, but I did not expect my adrenaline to be pumping before I got to Devil’s Lake!!!

Well we get to the park and it’s Super Busy, but we had decided that we didn’t just want to be here for the day, we wanted to camp. So we waited the lines to get a camping site that was within walking distance of the North Shore.

It only cost me $8 for the night and it was a REALLY nice site. I mean parking, privacy, trails down the hill to the shore, clean bathroom, shower, plenty of room etc… I would highly recommend site 236 and surrounding area at Devil’s Lake for other campers.

We went down to the shore and decided to do some rock climbing. The water level has been really low lately and so there are a bunch of big rocks along the shore’s that normally are not dry, so we made our way down the path via rocks instead of the trail. After awhile we decided that we needed to boulder up to the top, so we started our way up.

Funny story, when your muscles are worn out from dancing the day before, and you don’t have any water supply to take with you, It’s probably not a good idea to climb a mile or so uphill. We got a ways up and the sun was killing us. I was sweating a lot, and was so thirsty and was really feeling the burn in my quads. However it was to late to go back down, so we kept going up to the top.

There was a fairly high cliff at the top and Dan didn’t think we could get up it so he went to look around for another way up. However I knew the only thing standing between me and water was another 40′. So while he was looking for a “reasonable” way to go up, I just started going up the scary cliffs. I slipped a couple times, but it was just due to pure exhaustion. I got to the top and crashed out on my back in the shade and waited for several minutes until Dan managed to get up.

At this point I was no longer sweating…. Because I was dehydrated, and my muscles were so sore that when we were walking a path down the mountain I could hardly hold my body up straight and when it went down kind of steep I would end up running forward until the path leveled out again.

We passed some guy who was carrying a huge cooler that you could hear ice and water splashing around it. I sucked up my pride and asked him if we could have a little bit. To my surprise he actually said “No, I didn’t bring this up here for you” and kept walking. I mean I know it’s not right to expect him to share, but it would be the courteous thing to do since there was no way he would drink all of that, ice and all.

We finally got to the bottom and found a water fountain and proceeded to suck it dry (well, we came close). Then still being hot we just decided to run into the lake to cool down. I am not a big fan of swimming in Lake’s, but I gotta say there were lots of pretty ladies in bikini’s hanging around the beach.

When we got sick of that we went back to the campsite (where I took a very cold shower) and setup the tent, then decided to go to Baraboo to buy supplies. I mean it’s not camping without a bigass fire, smores and beer. While at Wallmart I managed to rationalize buying a new lockback knife (as a camping expense of course).

When we got back to DL, we decided to just go and sit along the rocks on the shore for awhile and daydream. We didn’t get back to the site until probably 9 something, but it was still to damn hot outside, and I actually didn’t want to start the fire.

Now I am a fire-a-holic, so that will tell you how damn hot it was outside. At 10 or so I decided that it had cooled off enough that a fire would be good, and we just chilled out there for the rest of the night.

               

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