Overnighter at the Nicolet

By Britt

What better way to start a weekend than by your husband getting home from work and saying okay where we going? Without any planning, we just spontaneously pick a destination on a whim, pack up what we need to, and hit the road at zero dark thirty the next morning. Well, that’s exactly how this past weekend went and actually seems to be our style lately!

We headed up to the Nicolet National Forest early Saturday morning catching a stunning countryside sunrise on the drive up. We had a great time, even though the night before I was questioning if we really had to drive 4 hours. Topher researched a few campgrounds and got some great tips on the area from a few of our new found friends. We decided to stay at the Bagley Rapids Campground and nailed an awesome spot along the river. Topher wanted to stay there and relax all day, but I was adamant about hitting the dirt roads insisting that we didn’t drive 4 hours just to sit at camp plus it was only 0900 when we arrived so there was plenty of time to explore. So we paid our $12 camp fee, set up a few things to claim our spot, and set off to explore the National Forest. At the same time, we were hoping that our stuff would still be there when we returned.

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Cruising the backroads we found a few two track trails and several free dispersed camping spots along the way, one of which was a sweet spot on a small woodland lake that we pulled into fired up the skottle and had a nice lunch. This is was actually the first real off-roading we had done with the truck camper set up and the new Old Man Emu BP-51 suspension system. We could have adjusted the compression and rebound as they are still a bit soft for the added weight of the camper and lower the air in the tires, but we decided to forgo that since it was just a one-day trip and we did not have an air compressor.

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We started to make our way back to camp around 1400. Along the way we made a pit stop at the town of Lakewood in Oconto County that sits within the National Forest and has a population of about 875 people. The town’s primary industry back in the day was timber; however, now its tourism and is an interesting little place that is UTV, ATV, and snowmobile friendly. While visiting the town we stopped at the Woodland Trail Winery, it was not like a traditional winery but it did have a few interesting wines on their selection list. We also stopped at the Mountain Fire Lookout Tower located in the Lakewood-Laona Ranger District. The fire tower was originally built in 1935 and has under gone two restorations since then with the newest being in 2016. The tower sits atop a hill that is 100ft tall and has a 7x7 foot observation room at the top. The views are spectacular from the tower and it is definitely worth stopping at if you are in the area.

Once we made it back to camp it was time to build a fire, so we could get a nice bed of coals to cook our famous Dutch oven deep dish pizza. We took a walk with the pup down the river to see the rapids at the end of the campground and then just relaxed and planned our next trip out to this forest. As our pizza cooked, I laid down in the hammock and could have actually taken a nap as I laid there listening to the river flow (much easier to fall asleep to than rain on the camper roof at night, although my husband would beg to differ). Needless to say, we slept awesome that night with a bit of a nip in the air and listening to the sound of the river flow.

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The next morning we swung by the Chute Pond Campground and the Boulder Lake Campground just to check out and scope out sites before heading home. Earlier that morning since it was a bit chilly, I had mentioned that I wanted some hot apple cider. So I was on a mission to find us an orchard. I ended up finding the Star Orchard that had good reviews and was one that you could actually pick your own apples at, so we stopped in there. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any hot cider but we got a half-gallon of their cold cider that we almost chugged through the rest of the way home. It was near the end of the season, so the apple pickins were slim, but we were able to get probably a dozen of some delicious apples to bring home.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/cnnf/recarea/?recid=27925

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd489142.pdf

https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/weekly_features/MountainFireLookoutTower.pdf

http://www.lakewoodwisconsin.org/town-of-lakewood/about-us/about-us-and-history/