Wisconsin State Parks - Blue Mounds State Park

Blue Mounds State Park is located in the central part of the state, a short 30 minute drive south west of Madison, the state capitol. It is tucked away among rolling hills, acres of farm land and forests. We love it for it's picturesque vistas, rolling hill terrain, and that it's the only state park in Wisconsin that has a swimming pool.  There is no lake, but the hiking trails and quiet atmosphere and short distance from home make it an attractive place to get away for a quick weekend camping trip.

We camped on the ADA site which was large with an asphalt pad and adapted high walled fire pit. We are not particularly fond of ADA sites as they are usually in high traffic area's very close to lighted bath houses. We like the night sky and darkness as well as a bit more privacy than these sights usually offer.  For us site 28 was an almost perfect ADA site.  The thick foliage separating the site from the bath house screened the light adequately and another area of less dense foliage screened the site from the forked road that was our high traffic area.  This part of the site could have had denser foliage as it did prove high traffic, both car and foot, and not a whole lot of privacy but it wasn't the worst we've experienced either. The bath house was clean, exceptionally so by comparison and when considering the park was at capacity this weekend.  The ADA bath/shower is one of the best laid out and easiest to use.  The shower head hanger was broken but that was a minor issue and one we encounter in nearly every park with a hand held shower head that we've camped at.

The weekend weather was warm and humid but gentle breezes made it tolerable and the nights were good for sleeping with windows and doors open. It did include two quickly passing showers that did not interfere with any of the activities, cooking or set up / take down schedules.

We did not plan on going on any side trips so other than a quick trip around the area to catch dinner the first night and in search of a road side sweet corn stand, the weekend was mostly meant for relaxing and relax is what we did. That super yummy sweet corn we did find fresh picked, at peak ripeness was a delicious once a year campfire cooked treat to go with dinner the second night.

Even if we're just on a quick weekend away we manage to find interesting things. This weekend we found this Luna Moth.  They only live for a week or 10 days or something crazy like that but they are beautiful and I'm kind of partial to their name.

So that about sums up our quick weekend get away, the perfect answer to an exceptionally busy summer week that included canning pickles for the first time (what a lot of pickles there were) and working on the neglected guest room home improvement project.  More on those at another time.