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| Entrance to Castle Mound Campground |
HaRVey the RV's first destination for 2015 wasn't Perrot State Park. This year we began with Black River Falls State Forest campground called Castle Mound. Just about an hour away, this Pine filled forest is huge with some 68,000 acres and 3 different campgrounds at different ends with lots of woods in between.
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| Pink Lady Slipper |
Castle Mound was the only campground which offered electrical hookups. We choose site 20 which had a pull thru and positioned the RV between the fire pit and the road giving us a more remote feeling. Although the campground of 30 plus sites was barely a quarter filled, so privacy wasn't an issue. Being the weekend after Memorial Day and the annual Ho-Chunk Pow Wow it was very peaceful. Plus it was relatively close to town.
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| Formations of Overlook Trail |
What attracts many visitors to BRF State Forest in Wisconsin, are the ATV and off road bike trails and snowmobiling in winter. We did a little hiking along the Red Oak Trail where I found the pink Lady Slipper blooming.
We also hiked around our campground on the Castle Mound overlook with these wonderful "castellated bluffs" rock formations. This area of the state is just on the edge of the driftless area like Perrot.
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| View on Overlook Trail |
It was a bit cool this weekend so we had to forgo any water sports to Lake Wazee and the Black River was nearing flood stage after so much recent rain. We also explored the small town of Black River Falls (more in next article).
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| Black River |
There was a lot of wild blue lupine in bloom which is a favorite of the rare Karner Blue Butterfly. We didn't see any of them but we did spy the Karner Blue Garden Club's secret hideout.
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| Blue Lupine |
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| Secret Hideout |
Special Thanks to Certified Auto of Black River Falls who repaired the Big Green Monster Truck's power steering hose in a very timely and affordable manner.
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ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, my biggest memory of the BRF Forest is finding that huge field of Lady Slippers, sitting down to get a better shot and finding I was covered in ticks - thank goodness I had an extra set of clothes in the car and the parking lot was empty!!!
ReplyDeleteAh....so this was the pink ladder slipper group that Marti got "ticked off" with. The photos didn't load (just the first one) - might be on my end though.
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