Wonderful Whites of Wisconsin

A bird in the hand is worth two Mountain Lions at an awesome campsite...


Actually an old saying much like this is one must be heeded during a bicycle tour especially when services are few and far between like in this area of the world. You have to take what you can when you can. There are times though when you must be stupid and/or have a little faith. Sometimes you are rewarded. After a long day of riding on my first day on the Mickleson Trail I was coming close to Hill City where I had planned to find a campsite. On my map there were two Forest Service campgrounds that I needed to choose from. After about 6 hours of riding I arrived at the Oreville Site which was just off of the Trail. Perfect right? Well, I got into the campground and found out it was $19 a night. Sheesh! It looked like most of their customers were the RV types. (They should have a different rate for lowly tent campers!!!)
I decided to try my luck at the next site: Willow Creek. On the map it looked to be only 6 miles away but those 6 miles were off the trail to the East. No big deal. At least I'm farther North. So I started on the spur. It was a nice downhill and pretty quickly it turned into a LONG downhill and I started to get a little lump in my throat about having to climb back out the next morning. About 3 miles later I got down into the Willow Creek Valley. To the Left was a huge KOA campground, complete with restaurant, truckstop and strip club. OK maybe not but pretty close. A little farther down on the right was the Willow Creek HORSE CAMP. What the hell is a horse camp? Well a site is $66 a night with full facilities and trails for your horses.  Great!!!  F*CK!!

What to do? Well the entrance to Willow Creek is also the Trailhead for Black Elk Wilderness so I decided to do some backcountry camping. You can camp anywhere in the National Forest as long as you are 100 feet from any trail and you register. I registered, rode in and found a perfect spot next to Willow Creek which had a nice shower sized waterfall. I got my tent all set up and my sleeping stuff ready as the sun was quickly getting lower in the sky. I then decided to cool off and take a nice shower in the cool mountain fountain. On my way down to the falls about 20 feet from my tent there was a muddy patch. I looked down, curious as to what else has been wandering around here. I saw these:

Mountain Lion print about 6" in diameter

Smaller, possibly mountain lion cub prints

Very quickly a fear came over me and all kinds of what ifs. It didn't take long though and I was quickly rolling up my tent and bedroll! What the hell was I going to do? I wasn't going to be SPAM for some big cat and kittens and I wasn't going to pay $50 for a damn KOA. UGH! I got all packed up and went back to the horse camp, hoping that the "camp host" would allow me bed down there somewhere. Turns out the "host" was just a camper, Sid White and his wife and grandchildren from Wisconsin. They were the only ones out there and had their five horses with them. Sid was a delight. He had been around horses his whole life and was now retired, travelling the country with his grandkids and riding. This very welcoming man and his family welcomed me in as their guest. I'm sure they could see the desperation in my eyes. His grandkids were very curious about this grungy guy riding an overloaded bike. The camping area was pretty large so I allowed them their privacy and camped a ways off. The funny thing though is that all the area was open grazing for the horses.  I was right in the middle.


Willow Creek Horse Camp from Delan Lonowski on Vimeo.

They invited me for dinner that night. Their hospitality was just amazing. Don't know if I'd do the same, hope I would though. They were about the best folks you could meet.