Scamping at Buckhorn State Park

Last week, I camped for a couple of nights at Buckhorn State Park in central Wisconsin.  

The weather wasn't great.  One day, it rained all day.  Again, that meant there were hardly any other people here.  Not a bad thing when Covid is running rampant in Wisconsin.  Like  trends and fashions, it took awhile for Covid to take root here.  But we are now among the nation's leaders in transmission and setting new records for hospitalizations.

Time to head to the woods.  Actually, Buckhorn isn't known for its woods; rather, the property contains some of Wisconsin's last barrens.  

Prior to the arrival of white settlers, there were 4.1 million acres of pine and oak barrens in Wisconsin.  Today, about 10,000 acres remain.  Agriculture and fire suppression won out.  

Buckhorn has some well-maintained hiking trails--mostly flat and easy hiking.  The Savanna Trail circles a nice pond.

 

The Barrens Trail is short, but Callie and I came across over a dozen wild turkeys just after sunrise.  Alas, I was too slow with the Iphone camera, settling for a landscape shot where the gobblers ran away.

Castle Rock Lake offers swimming, boating and fishing.  I don't do much of any of those, but it was nice to look at too.

We had one nice night for a campfire and took advantage of it.

Callie, assuming the position

We may stay home this week.  Temperatures are expected to dip into the lower 30's. I hate to winterize the Scamp so early, but we also don't like frozen pipes.

Circumstances

I was never a big fan of the music by the Canadian rock band Rush, but I did appreciate some of the song lyrics by drummer Neil Peart (who died earlier this year).  One song, titled "Circumstances," contained the following refrain:

 

"All the same, we take our chances

Laughed at by time

Tricked by circumstances

Plus ca change

Plus c'est la meme chose

The more that things change

The more they stay the same"

 

That's one way to look at the world.  I've spent the last couple of weeks coming to terms with my circumstances.  It looks like the earliest that Justin will return to the dorms is in mid-January.  For the foreseeable future, I'll be working forty hours per week as his caregiver.  At first, I was really ticked off, but I'm coming around to making the best of the situation.  

Our home is probably the safest place for Justin to be.  Covid is ramping up significantly in Wisconsin and its college campuses in particular.   I'm improving my caregiving techniques, making it easier for the both of us.  When my kids were babies, I used to make a game out of how fast I could change a diaper.  Yeah, I'm a bit over-competitive. 

Justin and I have been enjoying watching some sports together.  Of course, it helps that the Packers won their first two games with lots of scoring.

Last week, I just didn't feel like driving anywhere after my four days of ten hour shifts. Instead, on my off days, I hung out in my man-cave Scamp on our own property.   On work days, I took long walks out in the country.  

 

A neighbor's steers

The weather has changed.  The hummingbirds are draining our feeders, building fat for their coming migration.  Bee farmers are collecting honey, and downsizing the bees' homes.  Readers might remember earlier this summer when the boxes were stacked six or higher.  Not anymore.

 

Late last week, I made my last trip of the year to the grain share farm where I get my flour.  On the way home, Callie and I hiked the Pleasure Valley Trail at Blue Mounds State Park.  The trail is a mix of woodlands and restored prairie.  The leaves are beginning to turn. The prairie flowers are mature.  This is a Callie-approved trail.

 

 

 

On another day, Callie and I returned to Rowan Creek Fishery Area, which we haven't hiked since winter.  We've had some problems with off-leash dogs here, but no humans or canines were seen this time.  

 

Much of the trail follows one of Wisconsin's top trout streams.

 

 

This week's weather forecasts warm days and cool nights.  I better take advantage of that by going somewhere with the Scamp.  Winter is coming.

Lamentation and a Short Trip

My extended fall trip has officially been cancelled. 

There was a last-ditch effort to place Justin in a small group home just outside of Whitewater, which would have been great for Justin's complex physical needs and convenient for attending college also. He interviewed with the owners and felt that he really  made a connection.  Justin was told by Care Wisconsin that he was their leading choice among three candidates for the group home.

That fell through due to "contractual issues."  Somehow, we went from being number one on the waiting list for Care Wisconsin and the group home's top choice for placement to "it's out of our hands."  We asked for transparency regarding the contractual negotiations, and they wouldn't even give us the name of the group home.  "That's done now."

As a result, Justin is staying home.  He misses his best friend who lives on Justin's dorm floor. 

When things broke down, Care Wisconsin threatened to put Justin in a nursing home if Julia and I didn't cover the hours.   Now that's an interesting way to manage Medicaid dollars. 

Yesterday, we started the process to move Justin out of the managed care system to IRIS, which is self-directed care.  Justin will be given a budget for his care needs and hire caregivers from the money budgeted. As we understand it, with the MCO cut out of the process, there will be more transparency and better wages available to caregivers.     Justin will have an IRIS fiscal consultant and us available as resources, but he will be responsible for hiring, training, and managing his employees.

The transition takes awhile, so Justin will probably be stuck with his parents as his employees for this semester.  Let's hope that neither of us gets sick or blows out our backs. We were told by Care Wisconsin that it would take 8-10 caregivers to cover Justin's needs in the dorms.  At home, it's the two of us without any other back-up.   

The good news is that we won't have to worry about Justin laying helpless in bed when caregivers don't show up in the morning or sleeping all night in his wheelchair when a caregiver doesn't show up to transfer him to bed at night.  We live here so it's hard not to show up.  In order to stay sane, I'll continue trying to take short trips each week with the Scamp until the snow flies or hunting season, whichever comes first. 

Last week, I drove an hour west to Gov. Dodge State Park and camped in the rain.  It was wet, muddy, and dark, but the Lost Canyon Trail was still beautiful. I didn't have to worry about social distancing; there simply wasn't anyone else around.

Outcroppings

 

Stephens Falls

I like cooking in the Scamp on cooler, rainy days.  Here, I cooked mushrooms and slices of onion to serve with a pepperjack cheeseburger.  On the side, I have spinach sauteed with garlic and olive oil. To keep this post on blog topic, the Yeti is filled with home-brewed kombucha.

 

Rain?  Callie doesn't care.  More trails, she says. And maybe some of that burger.

Chippewa Recreation Area: Side Trips

On my second day of this trip, I woke to a fridge that was heading towards 50 degrees.  Oops, out of propane.  I carry two propane tanks, but my dual regulator hasn't worked right for a couple of years.  When one tank runs out, I have to manually switch over tanks to the side that does work.  

Why haven't I replaced the faulty dual regulator?  Well, I probably should, but the reviews complaining about quality control in dual regulators has not inspired me to make the purchase just yet.  

The empty tank did give me a reason to take a side trip to Gilman, Wisconsin, the nearest town to the Chippewa Recreation area.  Apparently, people in Gilman have different ideas about respiratory viruses.  As I entered town, a church sign advised me not to worry about the pandemic; instead, pray. 

Hmm, this was going to be interesting.  I drove to Cenex, a farming cooperative style gas station and confirmed the presence of propane exchanges.  After gassing up the Frontier, I put on my mask (required by state law in Wisconsin for indoor spaces) and went on in to arrange for the propane exchange. 

The first thing I noticed was that none of the customers or employees in the store were wearing masks.  Then, when I asked for a propane exchange, the clerk motioned me to lower my mask.  "I can't understand you," she said.  I spoke slowly and loudly through the mask.  She frowned, rang me up, and we went out to complete the tank exchange.  

"That was really weird," I thought to myself.  State law?  When our governor issued the mask order, a number of county sheriffs and local police agencies indicated that they would not be enforcing the law.  "My first duty is to the constitution," one sheriff proclaimed.  I'm not sure what the story is in Gilman, but there was no enforcement during my visit.

Gilman is famous for its swinging bridge.  

It moved up and down quite a bit as we crossed, but maybe it needs wind or something to swing.  

On another day, we took a little drive to two other national forest  campgrounds that I wanted to see: Eastwood and Spearhead Point.  Both had pit toilets and no hookups.  

Eastwood's main attraction to me is that you can walk the Ice Age Trail from the campground itself.  I will probably come back here someday for that purpose.

View from the Ice Age Trail

 

 

 

I think Spearfish is mainly for people who enjoy fishing, but there were some sweet waterfront campsites.  P12 was my favorite.

On the way back to my campground , I took the back roads.  Along the way, I saw a sign on County Highway G that surprised me.  "Road to Dispersed Camping."  Nearly all of the dispersed camping in Wisconsin's national forests is for tents.  When I followed this road in, I could see that this was an area set up for trailers.

I wish I could report that it was a great dispersed site for trailers, but it was not.  There were four trailers packed into a tight circle, and they all had big contractor style generators.  There was a steep,rutted road leading down to the river that might work for truck campers, but not my Scamp.  At the bottom, there were basically two sites, and both were occupied by tents.  For anyone wanting to check it out and for my future purposes, it was about 1/2 mile west of Miller Dam.

I returned home at the end of my six days to say goodbye to my daughter Allie, who has left the nest for California.  She had a few minor car issues on the way west (learning a lesson not to drive with cruise control through the mountains), but made it to a friend's house without too much trouble. She begins a job search in northern California.

This weekend, we squeezed in some grape and apple harvesting from our property.  The cider turned out great.  We were hoping to make wine but we need a few more grapes to make that happen next year.

An interesting color for grape juice

The final project of the summer was installation of a hickory floor in the kitchen.  When we first bought the house, we put in hickory floors in the living room and the bedrooms and tile in the kitchen and bathrooms.  I wish we had done the entire first floor in hickory.  This time, it was the kitchen.

Hickory is a hard wood and a very durable surface for residents with power wheelchairs (son Justin).