Capital Springs State Recreation Area
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Capital Springs State Recreation Area is on the south side of Madison, along Nine Springs Creek and around Lake Waubesa, about 3,000 acres of wetland, prairie, and woods that the DNR and Dane County run together. It was created in 2000, for the hundredth anniversary of Wisconsin’s state park system, and the Capital City State Trail runs through it. I hadn’t been to a new state park since August, and I figured that it was about time, so I went in the middle of the afternoon of October 9, 2021, after walking Aztalan State Park again. A pair of sandhill cranes was walking across the lawn by the trailhead, and I followed the mown paths through the prairie, where the asters were still in bloom and the milkweed pods were splitting open.
Photos from Capital Springs State Recreation Area
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A mown path through the prairie.
Asters still in bloom.
Milkweed pods, going to seed.