The start of our 2023 road trip is here! For roughly forty days, we lived in our converted Ford Transit Connect that Tyler built out this spring. After taking the Forester in 2021, we decided we needed to size up.Â
The Connect was an affordable and realistic option that checked multiple boxes: more spacious, daily driver option (for the 9-5 grind), decent gas mileage. The biggest drawback for us was the front-wheel drive, but it held up surprisingly well through some questionable off road adventures!
Day 1
We woke up excitedly at 5 AM after a whopping 4.5 hours of sleep (lots to prep for yesterday). Luckily, I was persistent about filming a dreary eyed “beginning of trip video” because we realized a approximately 5:30 AM that all of our Go Pro SD cards were reading as “full” even though we had cleared them days ago.Â
After a delirious 30 minutes of rushing back into the house to tinker with the SD cards (aka: frantically watch YouTube videos to figure out what was wrong) the issue was fixed and we were finally on the road!
To treat ourselves emotionally for the delayed start, we stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast in Western Maryland, near Whisp ski resort. The ski resort money was noticeable because that was the nicest McDonald’s we’d ever been in… AND it was in the middle of nowhere!
Once we made it into Ohio, there was a cop every ten minutes (seriously, isn’t Ohio bad enough already??). This was also when we first began noticing smoke from the Canadian wildfires. It only continued to increase from here on out until we were west of Wisconsin.Â
Entering into Illinois made us have some earth shattering realizations about our reliance on corn because, wow, there is a lot of corn in Illinois. We thought that we saw big corn fields driving through Indiana, but Illinois actually had corn further than the eye could see (I don’t think the smoke was the culprit here).Â
We arrived in the Wisconsin Dells at around 9 PM local time. We took a nice stroll around the campsite to stretch our legs then ate our favorite go-to road meal of bagged salad, tuna fish, and an avocado, and went the heck to sleep!!
Day 2
We woke up in Rocky Arbor state park after a wonderful first night of sleep in the van. (Technically I took the van to mountain bike camp a few weeks prior, but it was our first night together in the van, it still counts).
Tyler woke up early to make coffee while I slept in. The kitchen is attached to the back of the van, so I had a wonderful wooded view and breezes of coffee and pine as I was savoring a few more minutes of rest! After a quick oatmeal and fried egg breakfast, we headed towards the main hiking trail of Rocky Arbor (there is really only one main trail here).
We saw multiple shear cliff faces that had been laid bare from glaciers sliding through thousands of years ago! Conglomerates in the rock were exposed in the wall and made many interesting formations.
Afterwards, we drone to Chapel Gorge Trail and hiked down into the dells of the Wisconsin River. We were able to stick our toes in the sand and tanin heavy (a chemical in plants that dye water: think tea) river before walking up through the pine covered boulders. It was truly lovely, I look my sandals off and felt like I was an elf from lord of the rings. The ground was soft with pine needles and the rocky outcrops gave the whole forest a magical aura. Though, I did collect a smattering of pine sap on the bottoms of my feet–worth it.
We then headed into the main tourist strip to check out the river walk and tacky shops. The river walk was decent enough (pretty but very short). We were surprised at the number of interesting shops downtown. Of course there were cheap tourist shops with graphic tees and mugs, but mixed in-between was a surprising amount of artisan goods. We stopped in a small museum to see the photos which made the dells famous: the inventor of the camera shutter snapped a photo of his son jumping between two rocks!
After sampling a variety of cheeses at a local shop, we bought 4-year aged cheddar. The shop offered much older options, but they increased exponentially with price… and we are on a budget.
Next to the cheese shop was a magical alleyway that we referred to as Lord Farquad’s castle. We’ve never been to Germany, but I imagine this alleyway is what a small German village would look like (or at least, what an American thinks a small German village looks like). Seriously, it was complete with a clock store displaying dozens of intricate coo-coo-clocks, come on!
Next, we left town for Mirror Lake State Park to explore more of the dells. The wildfire smoke was starting to get to me so lunch and a small siesta were had in the van. Afterwards, we took a lovely stroll through the dells which included views from a 150 foot bridge, climbing over more pine needle covered rocks, a meander through what can only be described as Jurassic park level ferns, and a bench with a view of the river AND nearby live music. Sometimes you just get everything right and it feels good, man.
After the hike, I was determined to go back into town and visit the most magical place in the world (Magic Quest). I blame the pine covered boulders and coo-coo-clocks for making me feel like a high fantasy fairy. Tyler wasn’t convinced, but after I explained how our map from the state park granted up a 25% ticket discount, he was sold.Â
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Magic Quest was a joyous, awe inspiring journey into an intricate fantasy land. We spent nearly two hours navigating our way through elaborate mazes and artistry as we solved missions given to us by the “characters” of various realms.Â
When we were finally exhausted from the day, we headed back to camp to make quesadillas and shower. Since we were moving on the next morning, we did some “chores” like fill up our water containers with the potable water offered at the camp. Tyler was more than surprised when a little froggo jumped out of the camp’s water hose as he was filling up our solar shower!
