Although New Year's Day was cloudy, it was somewhat warm at about 30°. We decided to take Nick for a walk in the backyard and let him run around in circles, just like a horse on a lounge line. It really wears off his puppy energy. He is now about 1 years and 10 months, so he has a lot of puppiness yet in him.
From there we wandered into the nature preserve that abuts back to our property. We're very lucky to have such a natural environment right behind our house that will never be developed into homes. We wandered on through the paths and the "two-track" trails in the woods.
Although you really can't see it, Nick is on a very long flexy leash. He is never to be trusted off leash.
It's nice to walk back there this time of the year. The ground is frozen enough to not be a muddy mess, and the leaves are down so we can see further and not get lost!
It was cold and we bundled up, but at least it wasn't windy. That makes it tolerable to go for a walk through the woods.
Nick says with his fur coat, he doesn't even notice the cold. He's just prancing and dancing his way all around in the woods. He looks at birds and squirrels and thinks he's on the lookout for the great big scary deer who chased him when he was on the run. We actually have a video of him being stalked by a big buck through the fog! It was a year ago when we were attempting to catch him with live traps and wifi cameras. The big deer scared him. A lot. We didn't see any deer today, though.
This land is part of the NorthEast Wisconsin Land Trust. Beyond that is state DNR land of protected marshland for migratory birds. Many many years ago there was a big barn back here on this land. It was later torn down, along with a big 2 story brick home. All that's left is the foundation with the empty spacing from the windows of the dairy barn. Our grandkids call this a "castle" because these sections appear to look like a ramparts of a huge castle to their imaginations.
With the little bit of snow on top of each flat section, it makes kind of an interesting detail through the woods.
We walked along, enjoying the ambling path through the woods around the nature preserve. Here and there are little bits of remainders of the fall. We don't have tons of snow yet to cover this all up.
Imagine our surprise to run into our neighbors, who were walking their female dog Maple. They usually go away for the winter months, finding places down south to escape the Wisconsin cold. This year they stayed home as they are helping with elderly parent care. Nick and Maple sniffed nose to nose a couple of times on other walks. This time they had a chance to be a little more investigative and decided they were going to become friends.
We chatted for a while out in the woods, and then invited them back to our house so we could let both dogs off leash within Nick's fenced in potty yard.
Nick was rapidly becoming enamored with his new girly-friend. He was so interested in her and wanted her to play with him! (p.s. he is neutered)
We set them both free of their leashes, contained within the fence. Now we figured they could play and play and play!
Nope.
All Maple wanted to do was smell the remnants of last night's dinner on our barbecue grill! Nick couldn't convince her to run around and play with the balls with him. He tried. We then went into the house and they nicely shared his toys and she explored our home. He was so excited to have a playmate over, but she just decided to settle down at her owner's feet and relax and wait until it was time to go.After she left, Nick looked around for a little bit. Unrequited love. Where did she go? Broken heart?
Back to camping...
We made the most of a couple days at the campground. We took walks and got out the e-bikes. We knew we only had about 3 days to enjoy it before things were going to get cold and wet and snowy.
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Okay, on to the next part of my blog post title. I decided to do one more campground review on our very last place we went camping in November. We happened to look at the weather report and it was going to be some pretty nice weather and we didn't have snow on the ground yet. We looked online and saw that our favorite campsite at one of the campgrounds to the north of us was available. So we booked it online and tossed a few things into the motorhome. Away we go!
On edit: I just finished the video to go along with this campground review. Here is the link on YouTube:
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Here's the website with the information for Morgan Campground located on Timm's Lake. This is a Marinette County Park, in the Northeast corner of Wisconsin:
I did a really nice campground review last year on this same place, so if you want more details and more photos of the bath house, the lots, the fees, etc here is the link to that one:
One of our favorite sites is number 44. It's way back down in the corner of the newest section of the park. It's down in a little dip, and it's a pull through campsite. It includes electric and there is water and dump station available nearby. It's also very close to a small pit toilet. We really, really like this campsite because it's so private and you don't really see anybody else around you. The only drawback is it doesn't get any decent cell reception nor TV broadcast over the antenna. We don't care because we have Starlink. But that may be a factor for some people. It seems you have to walk up the roadways and stand on the hill to get a halfway decent cell phone reception of one or two bars.
We pulled in, set up, put down our levelers and made ourselves at home.
In no time Steve had the lawn chairs out by the campfire. It sure doesn't take us long to set up.
I whipped up a pot of creamy potato soup with bits of ham. I had a few extra vegetables on hand to dump in, but the base was one of those Bear Creek soup mixes. It makes a pretty big pot of 8 cups of soup. We throw the rest in little containers and freeze it in portions enough for a couple more lunches.
The sun was setting and the temperature was going to get cold overnight. I think it was getting into the low twenties or high teens. We had the furnace going as well as a little electric heater. Our holding tanks also have factory installed electric heating pads that run off electricity. If we weren't plugged in, we wouldn't be able to use them because they would quickly diminish our battery capacity of the Bluetti power station. They are like little heating blankets attached to the holding tanks.
We had discovered also the helpful hint of clipping one of my quilts up across the ceiling to the original strip of the bunk curtain rod. We removed the curtains long ago. We used little black clamps from the hardware store. It added an extra layer of insulation between us and the front cockpit and windshield.
We also unrolled all of our reflectix insulation panels for each window. We have pieces cut exactly the size of each window and tuck them into place. I made a video on it that I will soon have put together ... along with a bunch of other hints in tricks of things we use in our motorhome. Stay tuned for that.
The next morning, we had beautiful bright sunshine and blue sky. Boy oh boy, were we ever glad that we had decided to go camping. Here it is the middle of November in Wisconsin. We normally should be sitting at home with about a foot of snow with winter well underway. But nope, it felt like fall camping in early October. I am so glad we took advantage of it.
While we were in the woods, we came across this piece of artwork created completely by Mother Nature. Absolutely gorgeous!!!! This hunk of wood looks like it was pulled out of a sawn off tree stump. The shape and twist of the grain was so unusual.
I kept looking and looking at it and couldn't put it down. I don't even know what type of wood it is.
The bottom edge was already flat from where somebody must have cut that log off with a chainsaw. It's been sitting for quite a while in the woods and was very weathered so it wasn't a fresh cut on the bottom edge.
Here are photos of it from all four sides...
Of course, there's no way we could have just toss this into a campfire! To me it was a piece of art.
So I had to take it home. First I wrapped it in a plastic bag and sprayed in some bug killer. Then a few days later we wrapped it in tin foil and baked it in the oven for about an hour on low.
Here's a photo later in the week after I gave it three or four coats of a clear polyurethane. Now it sets on the mantle in our living room!!!
We made the most of a couple days at the campground. We took walks and got out the e-bikes. We knew we only had about 3 days to enjoy it before things were going to get cold and wet and snowy.
On our last day, we really didn't make a breakfast. So instead Steve fried up some of the bacon for a delicious lunch of BLTs.
Just look at that! Yummmmm
We eventually had to pack up and head home. But that was okay too. It was good to get out for one last time and I feel it was an extra bonus because it was the middle of November. I don't often expect to go camping in November. But when I looked back at last year's blog, that's exactly where we were camping, same place--- exactly in the middle of November!!
Today is pretty sunny with some scattered clouds and blue sky. It's quite chilly at 24° but with such a wind that the wind chill is closer to 12° to 14°. We just got back from another walk with the dog (only in the backyard this time). We didn't make it much past the two acre mark before we had to come back in the house. Brrrrrr!
After a warm lunch, I think it's time to take a nap with all this beautiful sunshine streaming and across the bed.
Nick thinks so too.
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