Granola-munchers unite: Pike Lake state park trails

Since it was the first day of fall here in Wisconsin (i.e. 59 degrees in July), trail hiking seemed like the perfect Saturday activity.  Preparing for the day meant long sleeves, bottled water, sunglasses, running shoes, tunes, and delicious earthy snacks.  I prefer the Simply Trail variety by Archer Farms, in a smiley face container of course.

Today's destination for the hubs and I was the brown trail at Pike Lake state park near Slinger, WI.  We felt a little bad for driving there since it is so close, but figured it was our civic duty to fork over the money for a state park pass anyways.  As we got started on the trail jogging, I couldn't help but imagine that I looked like a felt like a character from the Troop Beverly Hills movie:

Via zeebox.com

My other thought was, "I can't wait to find out which one of us takes a digger first."  It was not me.  I told the hubs that I was laughing "with" him, not at him.  The red spot in the middle is where he bit it.

One of the high points of the Pike Lake trails (pun intended) is the nice lookout tower on the top of Powder Hill.   You can see the lake (below), farms, the countryside, and Holy Hill in the horizon.  I hope my butt looks better after all of those stairs.

After a mid-trail break to rehydrate, make fun of high schoolers, and eat some trail mix, we continued on our path.  At this point the landscape was looking eerily like the Hunger Games (maybe we were just getting tired) and we kept each other amused by me shouting at the hubs, "That's nightlock, Peeta!" and by him doing his usual interpretive dance hand movements to whatever rap music he is listening to on his iPod.  For example, giving "toot toot" and "beep beep" hand motions for "Remix to Ignition" by R. Kelly.  I like to try and guess what  he is listening to by his interpretive dance hand motions.  Since I like to soundtrack my life, I felt like my usual running playlist was not a fit for the woodsy nature I was in, so today's hike was soundtracked by Bon Iver's self-titled second album.

Via treeswingers.com

Finally we made it back to the car after some slight detouring, as apparently we have a difficult time following colored stakes.  We decided that we wouldn't last long on Survivor with our lack of direction and my interest in eating snacks every 45 minutes, and mostly because we couldn't find our way out of a paper bag.  Ah tired legs, it's nap time.