July 11th Wisconsin!

We spent a night in Wisconsin deep in the Nicolet National Forest. Our plan was to first drive through the park and find a campsite, but it was getting late and Josh kept seeing signs pointing down roads that read "Campgrounds 1 mile" or something of the like. So we pulled off the road into a relatively large collection of campsites that was empty save the camp host. It was a nice little spot on a lake, so we settled in a site that had water access, so to speak. (we could walk down to the beach) It was windy as; it was difficult to hear anything outside of a five foot radius around you. The wind was a bit of a blessing, without it mosquitoes would've been bad. Josh set off to gather firewood and I began to pitch the tent. Halfway through putting it up I caught movement in the corner of my eye. It was a black bear, meandering through the other side of our campsite, about 20 ft away . It didn't seem to have noticed me, or just didn't care to acknowledge my presence. I did a rendition of calmly freaking out, ran up the steps to the road and yelled for Josh. It was futile really, seeing as the wind kept my voice from carrying very far. I stood on the road yelling for Josh anyhow and a few minutes later he came walking up. We visited the camp host to ask him about the bear. He said a bear came through the sites every week or so to drink from the lake and that the bear was usually more interested in the dumpsters closer to the road than us. Since it was quite a bit later we walked down to the beach to see if the bear was by the water and, sure enough, about a quarter mile down the beach there he was. It was a very nice site, so we remained there. Food was all packed away in the car. After all was said and done, seeing as I didn't get mauled, it was really neat to see an animal like that up close.