Mirror Lake and The Dells

It’s the second week of February and there’s not a lot of snowcover in S.E. Wisconsin.  Not a good sign for the farmers. 

It had been a couple days of snow and cold that kept us indoors and inactive.  A break in the weather and having cut our little Toledo trip short by one day seemed a good excuse for a drive, a little sight seeing, a night with a hot tub and some exploration.

The Mirror Lake Boat Ramp — clearly a bunch of folk have been out on the ice with snomobiles and cars.

We are having a primary election in a few days — February 20th to be precise.  Having not yet gotten over to the city clerk’s office to register to vote we stopped off to get that done on our way out of town.  Now, we can vote!

It’s only a bit over 100 miles to Wisconsin Dells.  In prior years we had a park model mobile home on a lot in Lake Delton (“next door to” the Dells).  We sold that in the early 2000’s with not a bit of regret but the area remains a favorite for a day’s drive.  Except today we planned an overnight and a good long soak in a hot tub! We stopped at Mirror Lake State Park on our way. It’s only a mile or two from the place we used to have our trailer and it’s a nice place for a weekend camping trip or a picnic.  The lake isn’t “large” but it’s a nice place.

Lovely stands of pine are one of the things we missed during our time elsewhere! Wisconsin has a lot of them, a fair bit of logging — largely for paper mills, and there are a fair number of private paper mill planted forests to keep the alive into the future.  Still, I love being among them!

Tomorrow we’ll most likely stop through Devils Lake State Park on our way home.  There are a number of State Parks which, though they were nearby we never really patronized very often.  Moving back is a good chance to refamiliarize ourselves with what they have to offer.  I’m sure we’ll make extended visits to these two and more over time so I’ll share more about them when that time arrives.

Some months ago one of my readers in connection with a comment about hotel chains suggested that she and her huz frequent the Choice chain of hotels.  They found them well suited to their personal needs and I heard what they were saying.  We’ve been checking a few of them out in the past 6 months or so.  All those trips between S. Texas and Wisconsin offered some opportunities; the trip to Toledo did too. And this trip we have once again given them another try.  I have to say that after years and years of favoring the Wyndham family of hotels (Including Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada and a good number of others) that we are finding it a bit harder to stay faithful to them.  Choice has been giving us better service at comparable prices and we may use them more and more in the future.  (not that we’ll be doing as much traveling — but the traveling we DO will have to be at hotels/motels seeing as we no longer drive around in our own accommodations).

Choice Hotels

So, we’ve gotten out of town a bit this month.  It’s tax time so I’m about to focus on that task and relieve my annual tax jitters.  After that we’ll see what we get up to as Spring comes on!