Vacation plans altered
Vacation plans altered
By Allan Olson
What started out as an impromptu camping trip a couple of years ago with my oldest brother and his family, along with my youngest brother, has apparently become a tradition. We all went on a trip together again last year, and immediately began plans for this year.
We picked a great location last year, beautiful St. Croix State Park. It was an enjoyable trip, with plenty of things to do inside the park. This year, my oldest brother picked the park. It was a mere two hours from my front door. Perfect, I thought when I looked it up.
Then, the politicians got in the way – all of their bickering detoured our having fun by fighting like a bunch of young children, and ultimately they ended up with a State shutdown, which included the closure of all State Parks.
Now where are we going to camp? We held out hope that they would come to a quick agreement and our plans wouldn’t have to be amended. We also started looking at alternative sites. With none of us wanting to camp too close to home, we needed to do some searching.
The dilemma was that we were all tenting, and there needed to be fishing and swimming in the park/site, and preferably some biking trails nearby. A location was found.
Now the second dilemma came into play. With only a couple days before heading out on our trip, the park appeared to be full, with only walk-in sites available, and those on a first-come, first-served basis. To go would mean taking a chance that we would be told they were full and then spending several hours driving around, trying to find an affordable location to rest our heads that first night.
This was outside my comfort zone; I wanted to be assured that we had a final destination before venturing out our door.
I tried to find other venues that had some vacancy a little closer to home. I succeeded in finding one located near Itasca State Park, but ultimately I was out-voted. Last Thursday morning we headed out with a destination in mind, but with no reservations in place.
The packing was a challenge. We discovered some things we didn’t expect, like air mattresses that somehow got ruined since we used them last, bike tires that were flat, and other assorted items on our list that for reasons unknown were either missing or misplaced since our move and the last camping trip.
We’ve known about our camping trip plans for several months, yet we never thought (or rather, took the time) to make sure all equipment was present and accounted for.
I went to bed before the packing was finalized. I was informed that I was going to drive, and my wife and brother would take care of the packing.
The next morning, we loaded the last-minute stuff (i.e., the kids, since they couldn’t be packed in advance) and headed off toward our destination, not knowing if we had a campsite.
That destination was Fall Lake Campground, a National Forest campsite just outside of Ely, nearly three hours from my front door, located in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It was a destination so remote that the GPS unit was even fooled, informing us that we had reached our destination 30 minutes prior to our arrival, while we were traveling down a two-lane highway surrounded by woods and water.
The trip north was a risk, but in the end, two campsites almost adjacent to each other were available to our party. The weekend had fishing, swimming, walking, sight-seeing, biking, a few biking accidents, a lost child and, of course, plenty of sight-seeing.
In next week’s column I’ll provide some details of our four-day adventure with 11 people, ages three and up.
By Allan Olson
What started out as an impromptu camping trip a couple of years ago with my oldest brother and his family, along with my youngest brother, has apparently become a tradition. We all went on a trip together again last year, and immediately began plans for this year.
We picked a great location last year, beautiful St. Croix State Park. It was an enjoyable trip, with plenty of things to do inside the park. This year, my oldest brother picked the park. It was a mere two hours from my front door. Perfect, I thought when I looked it up.
Then, the politicians got in the way – all of their bickering detoured our having fun by fighting like a bunch of young children, and ultimately they ended up with a State shutdown, which included the closure of all State Parks.
Now where are we going to camp? We held out hope that they would come to a quick agreement and our plans wouldn’t have to be amended. We also started looking at alternative sites. With none of us wanting to camp too close to home, we needed to do some searching.
The dilemma was that we were all tenting, and there needed to be fishing and swimming in the park/site, and preferably some biking trails nearby. A location was found.
Now the second dilemma came into play. With only a couple days before heading out on our trip, the park appeared to be full, with only walk-in sites available, and those on a first-come, first-served basis. To go would mean taking a chance that we would be told they were full and then spending several hours driving around, trying to find an affordable location to rest our heads that first night.
This was outside my comfort zone; I wanted to be assured that we had a final destination before venturing out our door.
I tried to find other venues that had some vacancy a little closer to home. I succeeded in finding one located near Itasca State Park, but ultimately I was out-voted. Last Thursday morning we headed out with a destination in mind, but with no reservations in place.
The packing was a challenge. We discovered some things we didn’t expect, like air mattresses that somehow got ruined since we used them last, bike tires that were flat, and other assorted items on our list that for reasons unknown were either missing or misplaced since our move and the last camping trip.
We’ve known about our camping trip plans for several months, yet we never thought (or rather, took the time) to make sure all equipment was present and accounted for.
I went to bed before the packing was finalized. I was informed that I was going to drive, and my wife and brother would take care of the packing.
The next morning, we loaded the last-minute stuff (i.e., the kids, since they couldn’t be packed in advance) and headed off toward our destination, not knowing if we had a campsite.
That destination was Fall Lake Campground, a National Forest campsite just outside of Ely, nearly three hours from my front door, located in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It was a destination so remote that the GPS unit was even fooled, informing us that we had reached our destination 30 minutes prior to our arrival, while we were traveling down a two-lane highway surrounded by woods and water.
The trip north was a risk, but in the end, two campsites almost adjacent to each other were available to our party. The weekend had fishing, swimming, walking, sight-seeing, biking, a few biking accidents, a lost child and, of course, plenty of sight-seeing.
In next week’s column I’ll provide some details of our four-day adventure with 11 people, ages three and up.
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