Wisconsin and Minnesota

Places visited (May 23, 2022 – May 29, 2022):

-       Bigfoot Beach State Park

-       Madison

-       Baraboo

-       Devil’s Lake State Park

-       Parfrey’s Glen State Natural Area

-       Wabasha, MN

-       Minneopa Falls State Park

In-state miles hiked: 30.91

Total miles hiked: 39.55

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t super excited to visit Wisconsin because I really wanted to travel outside of the Midwest. However, this was our first step on new turf, so I eventually got over this feeling and enjoyed it. Here, Nick began his running training for his 50-mile ultra-marathon in January, and I learned how to use my new pair of Nikon binoculars for birding (a hobby I will continue to enjoy throughout the trip). With Nick’s running schedule, I am left alone a lot. At this point, I didn’t know what to do during my alone time, and it’s something I will keep struggling with. I want to make use of this time to better myself physically and mentally, but I found that I don’t really know how to do that. My whole life has been centered around school and education, and for the first time ever, I don’t have to focus on that. I guess I never had the opportunity to find personal interests or hobbies outside of school because I simply didn’t have time, which I realize now, is kind of sad. And for perspective, as I am writing this journal five months later, I still struggle with this.

We tried to use our time in Wisconsin and Minnesota to learn how to expertly navigate Winnie life. We didn’t fully understand our travel schedule yet, and it was hard (and still is) to make concrete plans more than a couple of days in advance. This is something I struggled with at first because, before this trip, I considered myself a very type-A person. I wasn’t used to going with the flow and the lack of planning, but quickly learned any plans we tried to make ended up changing (due to weather, mechanical issues, etc.), so it was useless to plan more than a couple of days ahead. We were also living vanlife on easy mode because for the first two weeks of our travels, we were staying with family and friends all through Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In other words, we constantly had access to power, water, internet, and showers, which is not how we imagined vanlife going. I was itching to be on our own. I was ready for the challenge.

We visited Madison, where we stayed with another one of Nick’s college friend’s (Erik’s) family, the Buineviciuses, where they treated us to local, Wisconsin cuisines and gave us a driving tour of the city. The Buineviciuses inspired Nick and me to be knowledgeable about wherever we end up settling down. It was obvious they really loved Madison and made for great hosts.

In Baraboo, we stayed with Nick’s family friend, Kyle. Baraboo has a very interesting history of the circus and is surrounded by beautiful landscapes. Many people suggested hiking at Devil’s Lake, so we did a 16-mile hike through the park with our full packs. I was exhausted by the end of the day but was proud of myself for finishing. People hike/backpack for many different reasons, but I quickly learned that I enjoyed the challenge of it and would continue to try and push my physical and mental limits on every trip.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but we had permits to thru-hike the John Muir Trail in California starting on June 21st (210 miles through the Sierras). Because of this, we were taking any and all opportunities to train for this trip, especially because it was my first backpacking trip ever, which is why we pushed ourselves so hard in Devil’s Lake. Although we were excited to complete this trail, the permits caused a lot of stress and rushing at the beginning of our van trip. We couldn’t stay in one place for long due to time restraints, so we were constantly on the move, and we eventually made it a rule that we wouldn’t drive more than three hours per day. We also decided that we wouldn’t plan concrete things too far ahead like this anymore to avoid having to rush (this rule was not followed in the future).

By now, I was tired of eating pantry food. I didn’t feel sustained, especially for all the activities we were doing. It was mentally starting to become a problem for me as well because I would get frustrated at our food choices and started to dread meals. So, we changed our grocery habits and got fresh food to last us a few days until the next grocery trip. Granted, we still eat pantry food sometimes, but our diet is much better, and I physically and mentally feel stronger after the change.

Wisconsin was a beautiful state, and I am really bummed we didn’t have the chance to travel to the northern part near the Great Lakes. However, Nick and I promised ourselves we would make that a vacation in the future. We had to keep moving west to make it on time for our John Muir Trail permits.

Minnesota was short-lived as well. We had one more person to stay with here until we were on our own, Nick’s cousin Tracy who lives in Wabasha, MN. Now this is the first, and only time (so far), we have gotten the cops called on us. Long story short, Nick had never met Tracy before, and she thought we were scammers and had the police call us to question us. We laughed about it and after it was settled that we were in fact not scammers, we made our way to Wabasha. Tracy knew a lot about the history of Wabasha and had lived there since she was a kid, further encouraging Nick and me to learn about our future home’s history. We had a lot of fun sharing family stories and taking a short, rainy tour of downtown. Connecting with distant family and friends will, I think, forever be my favorite part of vanlife.

We said goodbye to cousin Tracy the next day and were officially on our own. Although we very much appreciated all of the help offered to us by our friends and family, we were excited to live vanlife as we intended. We were planning on boondocking that night, which is free, dispersed camping, with no water or electricity hookups, but there were not any official areas for this in this part of Minnesota. We had not yet learned how to find sites ourselves. So, this was our first, and only time we stayed at a paid campsite in Minneopa Falls State Park. We were trying to figure out a morning routine, so Nick went for a run while I did some yoga and a short workout. We hiked around the park and were honestly a little disappointed and looking forward to leaving.

We would love to revisit these states someday and take the time to enjoy the northern parts. There is so much beauty for hiking and backpacking that I regret missing out on. It still amazes me how much we get to see, yet still miss out on doing a trip like this. Even with a year of full-time traveling, it’s impossible to see the whole country to its fullest.