Go Take a Hike

For two of us, Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin was our next destination. Olivia and I met up with Bob, his family, and several friends at a group campsite at the state park. We’d spent the previous four nights in a tent up in the Upper Peninsula, and so my thoughts when I’d originally confirmed our participation was, “What’s another two nights?” But after a night punctuated by the shrill, deathly sounds coming from the venue—how about that for a collective noun?—of turkey vultures occupying the grove next to our site, I’d modified that question to, “How in the hell are we going to make it through a second night?”

Fortunately and necessarily, the birds remained quiet as we took a group hike on the stone-stepped climbing trail up to the bluffs overlooking the lake. Later on in the day, we got a closer look at the lake when swimming in its warm waters.