Boating

These state parks should have a landing from which you can launch your boat onto the nearby lake or river.

Willow River State Park sign

Willow River State Park

Willow River State Park is one of the more popular among Wisconsin state parks, primarily because it has a large waterfall that isn’t likely to dry up as it’s so close to the river’s mouth which joins the St. Croix River about 5 miles downstream. Getting to and from the falls can be quite the …

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Kinnickinnic State Park sign

Kinnickinnic State Park

Kinnickinnic State Park is a nice place to visit…if you can find it! We came from a hotel in Hudson, which is almost 10 miles (not 8.7, as the official trail map suggests) from the park. Driving south on County F, there is one small sign half a mile before you get to the road …

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Council Grounds State Park sign

Council Grounds State Park

We often try to double-up or triple-up our visits to state parks on our journeys. Council Grounds State Park would pair nicely with Rib Mountain State Park, since they’re only about half an hour apart from each other. However, on this trip, since we had already visited Rib Mountain last year, we just took in …

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Potawatomi State Park sign

Potawatomi State Park

There are 5 state parks in Door County, Wisconsin. We had originally thought to visit all of them in one trip, but we decided to “knock off” the southernmost, Potawatomi State Park, with a separate trip of its own. (We still plan to hit the other 4 parks in one week in June of 2023.) …

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Devil's Lake State Park sign

Devil’s Lake State Park

Our visit to Wisconsin’s largest state park, Devil’s Lake State Park, included three other hikes as well – in Natural Bridge State Park, in Tower Hill State Park, and through Cave of the Mounds. The hike around Devil’s Lake was by far the most difficult of these and is probably the toughest hike we’ll take …

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Lake Wissota State Park

Lake Wissota State Park

If you live in Wisconsin or Minnesota (or possibly anywhere else), you likely realize where the name, Wissota, comes from. Wikipedia claims: “An engineer on the [Lake Wissota Hydroelectric Dam] project [that created the lake], Louis G. Arnold, named the lake by combining the beginning of “Wisconsin” and the ending of “Minnesota”.” And you would …

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Wyalusing State Park

Wyalusing State Park

This article is about our second visit to Wyalusing State Park. Sadly, I don’t have the pictures I took on our first visit. (Or, if I do still have them, I can’t find them.) Those pictures included a shot of the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. These do not. This second hike was …

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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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