August 2022

Governor Dodge State Park

Governor Dodge State Park

Governor Dodge State Park is currently the 3rd largest state park in Wisconsin. (Buckhorn and Devil’s Lake are bigger.) As if to emphasize this fact, half of the hiking trails are over 2 miles long each, and almost everything shorter than that is either inaccessible directly or isn’t worth walking on its own. That’s pretty …

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Hartman Creek State Park

Hartman Creek State Park

Hartman Creek State Park may offer the widest variety of activities of any Wisconsin state park. In addition to the frequently-found hiking, boating, camping, and hunting (and related) activities, you can go mountain (fat tire, singletrack) biking, swimming, snowmobiling, and horseback riding. Many miles of trails are specifically designed for horseback riding, for singletrack biking …

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Merrick State Park

Merrick State Park

Merrick State Park feels like a small park, though it’s not among the smallest overall. The DNR site currently says there are just 2 miles of hiking trails in the entire park. That’s not quite true. When we hiked in Merrick (the day after tackling Brady’s Bluff in Perrot State Park), we found several unmapped …

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Perrot State Park

Perrot State Park

There are a pair of Wisconsin state parks along the Mississippi River – Perrot and Merrick – that have an interesting history. They are both connected to a grocer from Winona, Minnesota, named John Latsch. You can read the details on this Merrick page (suggest you read that one first) and this Perrot page at …

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Mirror Lake State Park

Mirror Lake State Park

Mirror Lake State Park contains MIrror Lake. Nothing surprising there. But Mirror Lake, though technically a lake, is one of those bodies of water that’s really just a wider-than-usual section of a river – in this case, a few wider sections. Mirror Lake is not a standalone body of water with no inlet or outlet. …

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