Wisconsin - Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest and Yikes, Sibling Hikes!

This weekend, I visited the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. I have siblings with homes in this area, and I was visiting my sister on Sevenmile Lake. I stayed in my campervan in the driveway. My brother, who has a place nearby, was also up in the woods. Another sister was here visiting too, so in all, there was one sibling and one brother in law here together.

One sister has a passion for looking for and finding wildflowers. My brother, John, on the other hand, has an over the top passion for finding rocks. He likes rocks of all types, but while in this area, he is always on the lookout for quartz. This day was a lesson in wildflowers and rocks.

I am the youngest of 10 kids, and the siblings I was with remembered when they were kids and would come to this area camping – long before anyone owned property up here. I personally don’t remember it, but that’s probably because I’m the youngest of the crew.

Saturday morning started out nice, my brother in law was out fishing very early, and it was a very peaceful, serene morning. We eventually all went out, picked up John and went on a few hikes.

The first hike was one my family has done MANY times since it is close, the Franklin Lake Nature Trail. This trail is a beautiful hike through the woods, over a couple of streams, up to the shore of Butternut Lake, and then back. We spotted a ton of wildflowers along the way, including the Lady slippers that had not been blooming a week before when my sister had been there. A little past the lady slippers (by stop #19 on the nature trail), was a HUGE patch of Maidenhair Ferns! These plants are so cool!

After the Franklin Lake Nature Trail, we went to go “visit” another one of my brother’s rocks. This one is way back in the woods, and he apparently hadn’t visited it for years. We parked on a dirt logging road way back in the woods, and my brother said that he thought it was “right in here”… well… about an hour later, and about 9000 steps after we started the search, we hear John yell “Ah Ha”!!! Finally.

Unfortunately, he just found a cairn that he had built about 3 years earlier, pointing him in the right direction. At least we were close. About a half mile later, we finally came upon this exceptionally large quartz rock, that to me, was not worth all the fuss. John took us from the rock, and went a bit further into the woods, about another quarter mile – there was no trail, we just made our way – and got to a good sized, beautiful river.

In all, brothers can be annoying, and ones with a weird fascination for rocks can be annoying AND lost in the woods, but in the end, he took us to see a beautiful site in the wilderness. It was a great hike through the wilderness woods with no path!

The day ended much in the way it began, with my brother in law fishing.