The Moon Lake Resort, Wisconsin

I treated myself to a butterscotch milkshake at the Dairy Queen in Ladysmith, and kept going until the sun started to go down over the town of Turtle Lake. An arrowed sign led me to a campground next to a large lake south of the town limits and I paid the sweet, blonde lady ten dollars for a site right next to the dirt road. She had come riding up to the office, located in the basement of a big, white house, on her husband's lap as he drove a big John Deere tractor, and both were laughing like teenagers. When I filled out the registration card, she remarked, "Oooh, you're a long way from home, arent'cha?"
"Yeah, sure am." I explained about the trip, just dawdling around the US with no particular destination.
"Oooh, that must be great!" she said. She was right.

I almost didn't find the site -- pitching a wild left on a whim when I saw the sign for the Moon Lake Resort and Campground. I drove right past it, then turned back after 3 miles of farmland.

On a whim, I stopped at the Moon Lake Tavern, at the end of a quarter-mile driveway, to ask where the campground was. And as I got closer to the bar, I saw the campground. Duh.
I still wanted to see if they took tent campers, not just RVs. The tavern was a good place to inquire. As I walked in, about ten people in the bar yelled, "Kristen! Hey, there she is! Kristen!" It was like Norm from Cheers.
I laughed. "Um, hi. But I'm not Kristen."
That didn't stop them from being welcoming. "Oh, well what's your name?"
"Jessica."
"Well, hi, Jessica!"

Fifteen minutes later, the blonde lady showed me to my site, a patch of lush grass with a picnic table, spigot, electrical hookups (yes!), and right near the bathrooms. The clouds overhead looked like rain and I debated whether or not to pitch the tent. I decided to sleep in the car, and plugged in my laptop to settle in and write about my calf, with fingers that still smelled of manure, in a patch of sweet chive.

The wind picked up and a chill set in. I made some instant coffee. Children camping in RVs with their parents rode bikes around the dirt roads and three young men hitched their fishing boat to a truck. An older couple next to me built a fire in their fire ring and toasted marshmallows. Every so often they would peek through the trees to check on me, slaving away on my laptop. I was the only person who didn't have a camper trailer, so I got some funny stares. One brutish, burly woman walking by saw my license plate, said, "Maryland?", gave me a disparaging look, an eye roll, and kept on going. I didn't like her.
I whispered under my breath, "You wanna come back here and make something of it, you fat cow?"

As the sun began to set, I took a walk to the lakeside but didn't get very far. The couple next to me, still perched by the fire, waved. "You look like you're cold!" the woman said.
"Yeah," I laughed. "A little."
"Well, come sit by the fire!"
"Okay, let me get my chair." With the chill setting in, I didn't need much encouragement.

"I was about to come over and tell you," the wife said, referring to my laptop on the picnic table, "that working is not allowed here! You're on vacation!"
"Oh, trust me, it's a working vacation. But you're right, I should enjoy this."
It's true -- since this is as much a business trip as an escape from responsibility, I have to find the happy medium between work and play. And with so much to see and so much to write about, that becomes difficult.

We talked about traveling and camping, and I noticed just how nice their RV was. It had a permanent porch and a hefty store of firewood underneath. "We just use this on the weekends," they explained. "We live down in Eau Claire."

They told me lots of stories about camping years ago with their children. "Those kids were raised camping. They just about lived in the bottom of this fishing boat we had for awhile. Just spread a blanket out and they'd sit there with their life vests on, just playing. You remember those big, orange, puffy vests? Oh, yeah. They loved it!"

They rattled off the litany of campers they'd owned over the years and I was jealous. It reminded me of something Greg had said just days before I left. We saw a Minnie Winnie for sale in the parking lot of the Dollar Store. "Yeah, honey, let's do it! Let's live like that. Get married, have ourselves a little road baby." Driving down these roads the last few days, knowing I've never been more at peace than now, I seriously considered it. Now these folks were sealing the deal.

"We bought this one in July of last year, and we love it. It's our weekend retreat. You should talk to some of the people here on this campground if you're writing a book. Some real interesting folks."
I had already found some.

We agreed wholeheartedly that Maryland and the surrounding areas are fast becoming the playground of Satan, not in the Las Vegas or Sodom and Gomorra way, but in the new millenium, "Quick, let's buy up all the historic farm land and put pre-fab mansions on it and sell it for a million dollars, who cares about school crowding and traffic?" way. I told them about the new trend in Delmarva real estate -- sell off your backyard to a builder and send your kid to college.
"There's a house just built in my neighborhood, nothing special, little ranch deal with about a fifteenth of an acre of yard. It sold for $375,000, and someone was actually stupid enough to buy it!"
"That whole area is so different," she said. "We went down to Washington, DC on a bus trip a while back and you can have it. No thank you."
"What I don't understand," the husband said, "is all that expensive art in those buildings. Not the museums, but the Justice Department and the House buildings and all that. They don't need big paintings and marble. Those are our tax dollars right there. And the worst part is, they made a big fuss that Saddam Hussein had all those palaces and stuff, but it's just as bad in our nation's capital. Same thing, just a different location."
"Oh, and another thing," he continued. "The tour guide made this big fuss about how we were going to go eat at some place, The Kennedy Center. And on the trip they told us to wear comfortable clothes, right? So they drop us there at the Kennedy Center and just leave us, looking like a bunch of hillbilly dirt farmers, at this grand place with all the ladies in their mink stoles and nice clothes and everything. Man, I could have crawled into a hole. I felt so out of place."
"Yeah," she chimed in. "We stood there for about fifteen minutes before anyone even came over to see what we wanted."

I told them some road stories, some of which involved my breathalyzer courtesey of the Maryland Judicial System two years ago. "Man, that's a great idea!" they said. "I wish we would get something like that out here! We've got repeat offenders that get five, six, seven DUIs and never go to jail."
That seemed ludicrous to me. "Are you serious? Not even 30 days?"
"Oh, no. They just get stiffer fines each time, and they get their license taken away, but they don't care. They still drive."
The husband said, "I know one guy, he used to drive around with a wig on so the cops wouldn't recognize him driving around. If they got one of those breathalyzer things you're talking about, that would solve that problem real quick. 'Cause right now, all they gotta do is pay a fine and they come out smelling like a rose."

I told them about the calf earlier that day and they laughed. "That musta been real exciting for you, I bet!"
"Oh, goodness yes! I loved it! It was intense!"
The wife said, "Oh, yeah, I know it. It's hard work. When I was younger I had one rule -- I never dated a farm hand."
Confused, I asked why.
"Because I was raised on a farm and I didn't want to ever do that again! My mother worked like a man, and my sisters and I worked like boys. We'd heave those big bales of hay right over our heads! But my mother, ooh, boy. She worked right alongside my dad. No thank you. I didn't want that for the rest of my life. And when we got married, he helped on the farm, the good son-in-law. So did I. But I liked it, because I could leave at the end of the day."
"I think that's why I liked it so much too," I said.

At one point they asked, "So how does your boyfriend feel about you off seeing the world without him?"
"He knew it was coming. He's fine with it. Shoot, he better be fine with it -- he's nine years older than me so he's already seen the world. Now it's my turn."
They laughed.

When the fire had succumbed to the chill just as we had, it was time for bed. "I guess we'll see you in the morning," they said cheerily as we packed up our chairs. "You sure you're gonna be alright sleeping in that little car?"
"I do it all the time," I assured them.
It was cold that night, leaving one foot numb inside my boot. My toes were blue when I took my shower the next morning. "And this is summer," I thought, laughing.

The couple walked over as I was boiling water on my single-burner propane stove for coffee and oatmeal. "That's a cute little cooker you got there," she said.
"Thanks! It's perfect for me. My boyfriend thinks I'm crazy, because he likes cooking over the fire. You know how guys are with fire and meat," I teased.

Later on, coming out of the bathroom, I bumped into Monica, the sweet blonde from the day before -- literally. She was pulling weeds from the edges of the building and I damn near knocked her over. "Headin' out? Where ya headed?"
"West," I said. "Through Minnesota to North Dakota."

We chatted about the differences between the upper Midwest and the East Coast. "Y'know, I'm from the city myself, from Milwaukee, then I moved out here when I got married. And I never realized before that people from the city, they do things faster. They even talk faster. And walk faster."
"Oh, yeah, you're absolutely right. This is a fabulous place, by the way."
"Yeah, we just love it. It's perfect. Real country."
She was right. I envied her somewhat, the smooth summer nights on the lake, the quiet life of gardening and running a campsite. If not for the harsh winters, I would want the exact same thing.

I asked her what I should expect in North Dakota and was surprised by her answer. "Lots of oil rigs. And millionaires."
"What?"
"Oooh, yeah. Back in the seventies they found oil in the farm land of west North Dakota, so all the farmers became millionaires. There's actually more millionaires per person in North Dakota than any other state."

As we were talking and I was throwing the last of the stuff into the car, the couple from next door came walking up, bearing gifts. "Here's some homemade rhubarb bread for you to take with you," she said.
I about died of humble-itis. I had nothing to give them in return, except a hundred blushing thank-yous I hoped would suffice. And my email address.

As the wife walked away to get some paper, I realized I still hadn't even gotten their names, or introduced myself. I sometimes forget my manners.
"I'm Brian," he said, "and my wife is Darlene."
"I'm Jessica. And the pleasure's mine, thank you so much for the bread, and the company."
Monica came walking up as Darlene arrived with the paper and pen. "These are the sweetest people you'll ever meet!" she said. "And I'm lucky because they're my neighbors!"
"Oh, I'm learning that!" I exclaimed. "Very much so."

As I pulled away from the campsite Monica was back to gardening, fiddling with a hanging plant as she brightly called, "Good morning, Robin!" to another of the campers. Oh, how I wanted her life!

People in Wisconsin are some of the friendliest, most generous, kind people there are.