On the Road Again


On the Road Again

By Allan Olson
Finally, the camping weekend was here on Thursday morning we took off for south west Minnesota, looking to explore a part of the area we had never visited before. The plans were to spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday in the campground and head home early Sunday morning, however weather once again played a role in our camping adventures.
The weather forecast when I checked it on Thursday morning for our camping location looked great, maybe a little hot, no rain and certainly no cold weather forcing us to head home early once again like last year. Of course as fickle as Mother Nature is, things changed.



We left home about 6:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, our four kids and one nephew with all the camping supplies crammed into the vehicle; there wasn’t any extra available space. My plans for this weekend included not working, lots of geocaching and some relaxing with the family. The geocaching plans weren’t about getting numbers but rather about targeting counties that I haven’t been to and some other stats that I wanted to collect for my hobby.
Our destination was Camden State Park, about 275 miles, at the end of the day when we finally arrived at our campsite, sometime after 6 p.m. we had logged about 330 miles. Our stops included geocaching, lunch and a visit to a World War II museum in Granite Falls. I thought 50 miles extra wasn’t too bad for the day. Of course it also took about 12 hours to get to our destination instead of six. We checked in, set up the tents, grilled burgers, kids did some swimming and we hit the bed about 10 p.m.
On Friday, the plan that I had drafted prior to departure was mostly keeping close to camp we were going to some kayaking/canoeing and other recreation in the campground. That late afternoon we would head out for some geocaches I had picked out to save time on Sunday. First up we went to check out the “lake” where the water craft were located and we had to grab a few things in town that we missed the day prior. The lake if that’s what it truly was looked slightly bigger than most stock ponds, the boat ramp looked like it hasn’t been used in 10 years and the algae was pretty thick, but in all I thought it would work for our purposes. We headed to town grabbed some supplies, filled up the tank and headed back on the road and then the plans changed. The crew decided they wanted to check out a different state park for canoeing/kayaking instead. I informed them that because they are messing with the schedule that if this park doesn’t work out then we are doing my Saturday schedule on Friday. With that we hit the road to Blue Mounds State Park, upon our arrival we discovered that they have no canoeing/kayaking options in the park, after a quick tour of the park along with finding the geocache in the park we hit the road.
Early that day, I checked the weather again and of course it was supposed to rain sometime this evening, nothing looked too bad and I wasn’t really concerned. Well unknown to me, the kids screen was left open on their tent and apparently we were missing our good tent stakes for our tent –oops. As the day progressed we headed to the far southwest corner of the state, finding a marker that put is in three states at one time, Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa. We then started heading back east, making a quick stop at a rest area to make some food and a few miles down the road for some ice cream as every time we stepped out of the vehicle we felt like we would melt.
As our drive eastward continued I was noticing the clouds and how unfriendly they looked, but we kept on our route. It was about 6 p.m. when the rain started coming down, not too hard at first but then wind picked up as did the rain and by 6:30 p.m. we were getting pounded by sheets of rain and wind gusts topping 60 mph at times. At one point I pulled over on the side of the road for about 10 minutes, however our location was in the heart of the storm and we needed to get further east to get out of it. We drove in the pouring rain for at least 30 minutes and at times we could barely see the vehicle in front of us before the storms subsided into a sprinkle.
We had set our course for our campsite, wondering the whole time if we would have a tent left and if we did how wet would our stuff be. We finally arrived; the moment of truth was here. We pulled into our campsite and found our tent had flipped over, the kid’s tent; most of the bedding was wet as well as some of the clothes. With the help of a couple kids, I got our tent turned over and found it also had standing water in it. Our camping adventures were over. We tore down camp in about 20 minutes, stuffed and crammed everything in the vehicle and headed to check out – our next destination a hotel. I did a quick search called one, they had rooms available, they had a pool and most importantly they had a free breakfast in the morning. By 9:30 p.m. we were checked in and unloaded and headed back to the store to grab a few non wet clothing items. Back at the hotel, the kids and I hit the pool for nearly an hour before I had enough and needed to get some sleep.
The next morning, we checked out of our hotel at 10 a.m. and we were back on the road, another stop at the store for some more water, movies for the vehicle and a stop for coffee and gas and we were on the road again. We had some backtracking to do to finish up my list for this trip, but our ultimate destination was home. We eventually did make it home Saturday, after 1,060 miles we arrived at home at 11 p.m. We unpacked some of the wet stuff, the cooler and a few other items, one of the kids put in a load in the washer and we headed to bed.
Sunday morning, I finally got up and made breakfast after 9 p.m. laid around for another two hours before finally leaving again just after 1 p.m. This time, my destination was north, Abigail, Marcus and Alivia are spending the week at their grandparents and Nikolai started his two week summer internship program with the Leech Lake DRM. It’s going to be a very strange and quiet week around the house, but I’m pretty sure, it will go by quickly.
Our next camping trip is in less than four weeks, hopefully it will go better than this one or I’m going to start renting the state park cabins and just put the tents away.
Enjoy your summer, and be sure to snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.

Photo: 

The kids at the marker where Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa all meet up, in the far southwestcorner of Minnesota.

 

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