Camping Season Recap

I think I can say with some confidence that the camping season is over for the year. Overall, the boys had 17 tent nights in 2009:
- Forestville SP (1) early May
- Crosby Manitou SP (3) Memorial Day
- Wild River SP (3) June
- BWCA (4) July
- Badlands/Black Hills (4) August
- William O'Brien SP (2) Labor Day

I added another 3 on a February BWCA trip and 4 on a May BWCA trip, for a total of 24. Pretty solid work - we'll give the tents a few months rest.

Sam Scores a Touchdown!

Badlands and Black Hills

Day 1. Cedar Pass Campground area. We did a few short hikes, but as you can see, the weather was a little overcast and rainy. Still beautiful country.

I swear I just saw a prairie dog down this hole.
Sage Creek Campground - primitive and grasshoppery.
After the storm - beautiful sunset.
I dare anyone to try and drive by Reptile Gardens with a 6 and an 8 year old boy. It's impossible.

Giant tortoise is 128 years old.

Beautiful drive through Custer State Park - you can see Mt. Rushmore in the distance over Sam's head.

French Creek - caught a few chubs but no brook trout. We didn't pound it hard though.

Here's the big male buffalo we almost ran into on the trail and who later came down for a drink of water.

Sylvan Lake

Grace Coolidge walk-in fishing area. It's a series of 6 small reservoirs made along a stream. Sam caught a few rainbows on a beetle fly, including this nice 12-incher.

Last morning - had to almost shake them out of bed.

Boundary Waters - Kids Trip

Third annual Father-Child trip. Same crew as 2008: Mike and Max (8) Beckman; Mark, Luke (11), Ben (9), and Allie (8) Janosy; Pete, Megan (8), and Morgan (8) Mavoides; and Dave, Sam (8) and Sean (6) Sommerness.

The Mavoides and Janosi flew and drove in, respectively, the night of July 16th and spent the night at our house in Bloomington. We were up fairly bright and early and hit the road for the north woods, stopping for a cold cut lunch at the Beaver Bay Holiday Inn. It was a little cool for July, and as we headed inland from the shore it started to drizzle. Our previous two trips had near-perfect weather, so the law of averages had to catch up with us at some point. Spirits were high as we pushed off from the landing in the early afternoon.

We decided to take three canoes in, trimming them as best we could to account for light kids in front (or was it heavy dads in back?). In addition to the drizzle, the wind started kicking up, which made for a harrowing southern turn out of the Alton Lake portage. We all made it and started riding with the waves down the eastern shore looking for a campsite. One, two, three campsites were occupied before we passed our 2008 site. It too was occupied, so we kept going. It was looking pretty grim - none of us wanted to have to paddle against the waves back up to the northern end of the lake - but we thankfully struck paydirt on the very last site on the lake. It wasn't the greatest site in terms of having a nice landing area, but there were plenty of tent pads - home for four days!

The rain stopped for the most part, but it remained overcast and cool (lots of wind) for the first couple days. Pete's attempt to travel back to Sawbill to pick up Mike and Max was aborted due to the wind, so Jugs had to join him for the journey. I stayed back with 5 of the kids and took turns taking them fishing against the leeward side of a small island just outside our bay.

The weather turned beautiful on Sunday and Ben was finally able to swim (he'd been champing at the bit since we arrived). The fishing wasn't great - we pulled in a half dozen smallmouth over the course of the 4 days but no walleye. The boys caught a number of crayfish - the dads too one Beam-fueled night - and they made a nice appetizer a couple nights.

First order of business: Inventory Propel and determine daily ration.

Pete and the girls enjoy some coffee and cocoa.

Drying out - campsite from the water's edge.

There were a few games of LCR but not nearly the draw as 2008.

Water detail

Fun with licorice

Whittling was a big draw

The girls with their replacement knives


Sean moved on to larger projects...

Warming up the grill for Allie...


The trooper

Dad, I need another leech - shocker.

Now that's a bass!

Luke, right before we blew down the lake


Mmmmm Spam


Mmmmm crayfish

The night the Beam ran out...

Wild River State Park - Family Camping

Two peas in a pod

Afternoon at the Lindstrom city beach

The warriors

Grace's 'mean' face

Minneapolis Marathon

Trish finished the Minneapolis Half-Marathon today in 1 hour 57 min!

Crosby Manitou State Park - Memorial Day

The boys and I headed up the north shore to go camping for the long Memorial Day weekend at Crosby Manitou State Park. The park is a satellite of Tettegouche SP and has 25 walk-in sites along the Manitou River and Benson Lake. I reserved one of the lake sites (#21) about ¼ miles from the parking lot.

We got a late start out of the cities and hit traffic, so we didn't get to the park until after 10 pm. It was dark, the boys were tired, and as we headed down the forest trail to the campsite, Sean was sure that I was leading us into a bear’s den. Armed with a trio of headlamps and much hand-holding, we eventually reached the entrance to our site, which was a climb up several sets of log stairs. I was double-packing and after faltering on one of the steps, fell backwards on to Sean, which didn't help his spirits much. I twisted my ankle pretty bad, but we finally got to the site. All was well once I had the tent set up – home.

We woke up to beautiful weather on Saturday. The whole weekend was nice – temps in the 70’s, slight breeze, and no bugs. Our site overlooked the lake and we could barely see our neighbors on either side. And thanks to a severe ice storm over the winter, there was plenty of downed trees and wood in the vicinity. All-in-all, it was an ideal setup.

After retrieving the canoe and the rest of our bags from the van, I twisted up some eggs and sausage for breakfast. We then headed out on the lake for some trolling. The boys quickly got sick of that, so we came in and went on a hike. We went further than I planned (or my ankle liked), but had a nice 2-3 hour hike along the Manitou and through forest. The boys played 'army patrol' for over half the loop and helped keep us safe from German and Japanese soldiers and planes (we switched theatres indiscriminently). Towards the end of the hike the boys were getting pretty whiny, so I pulled out the DQ card to get us through. Naturally, the Silver Bay DQ I remember from 30 years ago is no longer a DQ, but we made do with ice cream sandwiches. We grilled some brats for dinner, had a nice fire, and played Go Fish in the tent.

Sunday was another beautiful day. We tried the trolling thing again - same result - before packing out to Split Rock Lighthouse. It was a nice diversion and got us down to the lake for some rock-throwing and cooling off.

We stopped for dinner at a local place in Finland (Our Place) and got back in time to try some bobber fishing from shore. Sean’s ‘snag’ turned into a nice 12-inch brook trout, but that was it for fish. I had it out of the water for a bit removing the hook, so I didn’t want to wait for pictures.