Cherry Pie, Starlink Apocalypse and Devil’s Lake
I kicked off my day with one of life’s rare luxuries: a clean, hot shower at Peninsula State Park. It was only about 100 feet from my campsite — which in vanlife terms is basically “en suite.” Feeling squeaky clean and ready to conquer the world (or at least a coffee shop), I packed up and rolled into Fish Creek, the bustling little town just outside the park.
Fish Creek has charm, art, food, and tourists in equal proportions, and I’d barely scratched the surface. I figured I’d come back in the off-season, when you can actually park without performing a 12-point parallel maneuver while being watched by 16 people holding ice cream cones.
Speaking of parking, I spotted a 15-minute drop-off lot across from Blue Horse Beach Café. Perfect. Just enough time to grab a coffee and act like I hadn’t been living in a van for three months.
With caffeine secured, I headed south down the peninsula, finally noticing all the charming shops, pull-offs, farms, and views I completely missed on the way in — probably because I was too focused on Google Maps yelling at me for missing another turn.
I passed something called The Cherry Hut, and like any rational adult, immediately flipped a U-turn. I was imagining a cherry explosion — jams, jellies, sauces, cherry-scented toilet paper, you name it. Instead, I walked into an identity crisis: was this a taproom? A grocery store? A restaurant? A souvenir shop with commitment issues?
Eventually a teenager popped up from behind the counter like a whack-a-mole and I asked, “You got any cherry pie?” He wasn’t sure, but led me to a stack of pies in the back like it was a drug deal. The small pie was labeled $21, which almost made me pass out — but he double-checked and said, “Oops, it's actually $8.50.” Still steep, but caffeine was kicking in and I was in a buying mood. He then disappeared on a quest to find someone — anyone — who could operate a cash register.
Back in the van, coffee and overpriced pie in hand, I was ready to head to Devil’s Lake State Park and do the lovely East Bluff Trail hike I’d read about — stunning lake views, dramatic bluffs, very Instagrammable.
And that’s exactly when everything went sideways.
As I cruised along, connected to Starlink (because I am a modern man of the forest), I suddenly lost signal. I pulled over and noticed the dreaded red light on my Starlink router — aka “You’re Dead to the Internet.” Naturally, I rebooted. Because that’s what tech-savvy people do. Didn’t work. So I checked cables, reseated connections, sacrificed a granola bar to the tech gods… still red. Then I opened the Starlink app and was greeted with a giant “Starlink is Down” alert. Oh. That kind of down.
No cell service, so I figured I’d wait until I reached the campground to troubleshoot further.
I got to Devil’s Lake, paid the $15 out-of-state You’re-Not-From-Around-Here-Are-Ya? surcharge, gave them enough personal info to open a credit card in my name, and got a map so vague it could’ve been drawn in crayon by a distracted toddler. I found my site eventually — deep in the forest, under a Starlink-proof dome of pine trees.
Undeterred, I made my way to the beach, found a sliver of LTE, and consulted DownDetector. Turns out 50,000+ people had reported Starlink outages in the last half hour. A heat map showed that I was sitting right in the blast zone. I had to triple-check before I believed it — even CNN chimed in with “Global Starlink Outages Reported.”
My first thought: Did Russia shoot the satellites out of the sky? China? Space raccoons?
Nothing else in the news, so I hunkered down as the skies grew darker than my internet prospects. The next five hours consisted of drizzle, boredom, and repeatedly staring at my router like it might suddenly apologize. Eventually the red light became a pulsing white one. A heartbeat. A whisper of connection. Hope.
Too bad it was now raining sideways. I mean biblical rain. Which, for those not in the know, is Starlink’s kryptonite. So back to zero bars we went.
By 9 p.m., I was still in the beach parking lot, removing the sunshades from my windshield when I noticed something flapping under my wiper. A love note from the Wisconsin DNR: a parking ticket for not displaying my park pass. Which I had purchased — it was just hiding behind the sunshade.
Now thoroughly soggy and insulted, I attempted to find my campsite in the dark. The signage was nonexistent. I drove around like a confused Roomba until I found a site I recognized and triangulated from there.
The neighbors were burning an entire forest’s worth of firewood and sending smoke signals across the campground. I like to think they were trying to say “Welcome,” but my lungs interpreted it as “Evacuate.”
I sealed the vents, crawled into bed, and declared the day an absolute win for chaos.