As it turns out, Don and Tina are leaving today and going to Hampton for a wedding. Their son-in-law's sister is getting married tomorrow.
Rob and Don drove into Madison to pick up a keg of beer and other spirits for the wedding.
I visited with Tina. She showed me the house and introduced me to "Soap Nuts" They are a totally green detergent alternative that grow on trees. They are simply the deseeded fruit of the Indian Soapberry tree which is a beautiful large leafed tree that grow in the foothills of the Himalayas. They contain saponins which when released in water create an effective soapy cleaning solution that works amazingly well and has no toxins. It can be used for laundry, household cleaning, even shampoo.
Pretty cool. I'm going to try it as a shampoo and see how it is.
Anyway, we visited for awhile until Don and Rob got back and then they had to leave.
We took the opportunity to explore Baraboo. It is a really cute town. Very friendly. Rob got a haircut while I visited the Granery which is a cool "whole foods" type place. I bought some soap nuts and a natural bug spray made of Lavender, Catnip, which hazel and basil. It smells much better than commercial bug spray.
After shopping and haircut we went on a hike around Devil's Lake. Rob said it was 4.8 miles. It was a pretty hike. One of the main things he wanted to see is where the rock consisted of 3 elements; Quartzite (which is all over the place),
It started out really nice.
But soon became very challenging climbing up those quartzite steps forever and ever!!!
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| This is quartzite that shows the original sand ripples from when it was laid down by an ocean.
Bella is a super troop and rock hopper. She is amazing
 
I was getting super tired and kept having to rest. She was like the ever ready bunny. We came upon this Balancing Rock, which I think is the purpose of this trail.
 
It was pretty cool. You can see ropes there tied around the tree. People were actually rock climbing up to it.
I thought maybe at that point we were at the top, but not so. Even Bella was getting tired from scrambling up rock steps that were taller than she was.
   
The view was really nice. And did I tell you that people along the way were diving or jumping off the rocks into the water?!
We finally got to the top.
And onto a dirt pathway again.
And we finally came to the rocks that Rob wanted to see, which if we had started in the other direction was only about a half mile into the trail and we wouldn't have had to climb the bluff after all.
 
The rest of the hike was pretty and as it turned out we hiked 6 miles. Needless to say, Bella and I were beat.
 
We got back to the rig, grilled some dinner and went to bed.
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