Hiking Wisconsin 2020: Governor Dodge State Park

This was our second attempt at hitting state park trails, and can I just say? A million times better than the state park near our house (no offense Gov. Nelson). I mean, in its defense: while it isn’t the most exciting, that park (Gov. Nelson) gets points for being a mere 8 minutes from our doorstep.

Anyway. Back to the current convo.

Wisconsin is a sleeper state: the trails around here are deeply forested, and usually waterfront. They are scenic, cool, beautiful spaces. The lakes are fresh and clear and surrounded by pines and fresh air. In short: a real dream.

GOVERNOR DODGE STATE PARK

COUNTY: Iowa TRAIL: Stephen’s Falls and Lost Canyon TOTAL MILES: 1.2 linear DIFFICULTY: Easy

This park is about a 35-minute drive from our house. But once you get there, what a relief it is: immediately it feels about 20 degrees cooler than the city.

And not only is the park lush, but the lakes are picture-esque and I’m sure we’ll be back soon just for some dips in its cool deep-blue waters.

So: something to note. Pete has been staying up later with us on the weekends, so we’ve been doing “more mature” movie night and watching some Classics with him. Indiana Jones, Hamilton, Gremlins. Time for that child to finally learn the fine art of film.

And every weekend, (as a treat!) – we’ve been ordering late-night Dominos during that movie. There is nothing better for a movie night than cheap pizza, ya know? And with every order of greasy pizza and wings, there comes lots of leftovers. So here we come back to our current story: we had a ton of leftover pizza and garlic twists. So we packed them away for lunch. (If you already saw our Door County post, you’ve been spoiled to this little detail. But anyway.)

Governor Dodge was getting busy that day but also some roads were closed (thanks, flooding, and also COVID) so we found ourselves parked for our trail hike on the side of a random dusty road, snarfing down leftover Dominos pizza from the trunk of the car. While other wayward trail seekers drove past, staring us down. DON’T BE JEALOUS YO. The leftover garlic knots and sausage/jalapeno pizza hit right.

No pictures of our trunk picnic, I spared you.

After the pizza party, we hit the trail. It started with some open-air prairie (yeah I know, snooze), but got better real quick, like 5 minutes in.

Governor Dodge offers family camping at two campgrounds, six backpacking sites, eleven horse camping sites, two lakes, two beaches, a waterfall, cave, and 40+ miles of networked trails for hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, and cross-country skiing. So: it’s a lot, I am aware. Thankfully, with over 5,000 of parkland: that means it can still be rather sparse. So off we went, hunting for canyons and waterfalls.

First up: the Stephens family homestead. They were a farming family that settled in the area around the early 1900s. They built this “spring house”, which served as a fridge of sorts. Super cool.

After that we made our way down to Stephen’s Falls, which is where the magic happens. Suddenly the area has a thick tree canopy, thickly wooded, and after a short walk you find a stone stairway downwards.

Oh man, what a place.

From there you find the Stephens Falls, and a series of trails.

We took the trail following the stream.

So: after our walk I looked up a few of the folks on the two benches found on the trail. The first was in honor of a woman and her granddaughter, who loved to take walks down this trail together. These two are #goals.

This second one was for a UW student, who died after getting rear-ended on an exit ramp on the Madison Beltline (the one to the good mall, that I used to take frequently pre-COVID, so pretty familiar). He and his trusty sidekick pup both perished in the crash. They too trekked the woods of this state park often.

God bless the Internet for filling in those blanks after we got home, and god bless those good folks.

And onward we went.

As we made our way back to the waterfall it was much busier, including several Instagram-Famous-wannabes having photoshoots in the Falls. Even though there were signs everywhere to stay out of the water. Gotta love humankind these days.

After some time enjoying the view and cool air, we resigned ourselves to heading back to reality.

And that was kinda it. We hiked back to the car, the boys snacked on the last of the leftover pizza as we drove back home.

I loved this park, all the cooled caverns and fern-covered ravines. We’ll be back, I promise. Post-summer-vacation, first thing, we’ll be swimming in the cool lakes here. Pinky swears.