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Ten Degrees and Getting Colder

  Cold Sunrise   That's just the name of the song written by Gordon Lightfoot.  It was actually -13 F when I got up this morning (wind chill -24).  Tucson may have pulled back into the lead!  There's a lot of weighing pros and cons of Colorado vs Arizona by the wood stove.  Not much else to report. I did enjoy a few games of pool and a beer with my brother this week.  We don't get together very often, so it's good to try to keep the lines of communication open, especially with my mother celebrating her 86th birthday next month.  He lives in Milwaukee and just started semi-retirement.  Our opposing politics and lifestyles keep things very casual and surface-level.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.   It's important to find common ground.  He and his wife have started going to concerts and recently saw the Steve Miller Band.  Music is one of our common interests.      

Goose Island County Park

Overall, we had a really good time camping at Goose Island County park.  Mid-week is the way to go in Wisconsin this summer.  Early in the week, the campground was perhaps half full. 

Callie was a big fan of the park.



Julia joined me on Wednesday for the rest of the week. She brought her kayak. She put in at the park's boat landing on the north end of the island and followed the current to the federal wildlife reserve's boat landing on the south side of the island.



We got in our steps each day, but we were also glad to slow down and just take in the views.





By Thursday, we felt like we had experienced all of the park, so we drove up to La Crosse for some hiking at Hixon Forest.  Many of these trails are for both hikers and mountain bikers. We did a short loop here.


The trails in the Upper Forest felt crowded with mountain bikers, so we headed to the Lower Forest, starting at the Bicentennial Trailhead.


The maps gave no clue about elevation change.  The Bicentennial Trail is a wide dirt trail that pretty much went straight down the bluffs.  On the way back up, we took the very scenic Rotary View Trail, which was twice as long with many switchbacks (5.4 miles round trip).

From the top, we had expansive views of La Crosse all of the way to the river.



By Friday, the campground was getting busy, and it was time to come home. 

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