Crystal Lake, Wisconsin

August 26, 2024

Our next destination was a favorite location that we visited several times when the kids were young. Crystal Lake is in the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest of Wisconsin, an area having the state's highest concentration of lakes. We were here early last fall when we stayed at nearby Starrett Lake, but it was fun to come back to the area in the summertime.

This isn't going to be a very long post (relatively speaking), mostly because Julie didn't take a ton of pictures. While the lakes were all very pretty, we've seen most of them before, and they look similar to each other anyway.

Our site was pleasant, but the campground now allows generators from 10am to 5pm. We were often treated to a chorus of generators harmonizing with some nearby construction traffic.

Our first order of business after setting up was to visit the lake

They call it crystal lake for a reason--very clear water!

Julie spent some quality time reading by the lake

Just pretend this seagull is a loon

One day, we took a walk around Crystal Lake, visited the Nature Center, and stopped by Muskie Lake. The Muskie Lake boat ramp will forever be known to us Kovals as "The Beauty". Years ago, we witnessed an amazing sunset at this location. A young family with an antsy toddler were also enjoying the spectacle. After an eternity, the toddler asked his parents if they could go back to their campsite. The parents told him they wanted to stay for a while longer "to see the beauty." The toddler looked all around him, puzzled, and asked, "Where's the beauty?"

The Muskie Lake boat ramp in the daytime

Lakeside trail at Crystal Lake

No walk around the lake is complete without a visit to the nature center! Julie is checking out the display of ducks that we can never seem to find in the wild.

We tried for an epic sunset at the Muskie Lake boat ramp one promising evening

All in all, a pleasant sunset at The Beauty, but not as spectacular as the one Julie remembered from years past

Sunrise on a misty morning

On one of the days, we took a bike ride around the area.

The county has lots of nice bike trail through the state forest

We visited another old haunt, Firefly Lake

Water levels were unusually high this year, completely submerging the beach that used to ring the entire lake when we camped here long ago

We found an abundance of blackberries along the bike trails 🙂

The campground beach at Crystal Lake is also considerably narrower than it used to be

Of course, Julie always loves the loons!

...And swans too!

We had the wonderful fortune during our stay to get together with some former colleagues, one of whom owns a beautiful lake house not too far from where we were staying. We enjoyed two evenings of great conversation, a fish-fry at a local restaurant (an amazing amount of food--so unusual in this post-COVID age), a cookout featuring rotisserie pork, and a sunset pontoon boat cruise on Smoky Lake. Many thanks to Tom and Beth for treating us all to the fish fry, to Jay and Brenda for graciously opening their home to us, to Jay and Tom for tag-teaming the pork, to Steve for providing helpful rotisserie technical support, and to Cindy for noticing that the temperature probe that was thought to be inserted in the pork cooking on the grill was actually in a kitchen drawer instead 😉.

Sometimes a blog post just needs a squirrel picture🙂 I think it was wondering why Rick was up on the roof.

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