Sunday, July 5, 2009

4th of July camping

Charles A. Lindbergh State Park: Little Falls, MN
flag

We decided to venture up north a little ways (2 hours) to another state park. We were a little late getting our camping reservations in, but found one at this little state park a few weeks back. We arrived Friday afternoon after sitting through a ton of traffic heading north out of the cities. Of course the first thing Harpo does is get himself tied up around our chairs while we were setting up camp.
harpo wrapped around chair
setting up camp
kyle setting up tent

panorama of campsite **if you can see the full panorama view, just click on it and it'll take you to it's location on Flickr... for some reason the right half doesn't show up on my blog.
(and the reason Kyle looks mad in this picture was because he was trying to do a panorama view with the camera but I took it away from him to show him how to REALLY take it, lol - sorry honey hee hee)

We started to go for a walk once camp was set up, then we felt a few sprinkles - heard some thunder and thought it'd be smart to head back to camp. Not long it started down pouring and we were stuck in the tent playing cards and reading for the next hour or so. It rained a good inch to inch and a half in that short while, creating a lake under our tent.
rain rain go away
lake under tent

Even Harpo was sad it was raining, he wanted to be outside.
harpo wants out

Once the rain cleared we got the fire going and cooked dinner. Then played a game of washers.
washers

The next morning we fixed eggs and sausage.
breakfast

Then ventured out for our morning hike. This park didn't have extensive trails, but there were about 7 miles worth or so. We had gotten in one trail down by the Mississippi river the night before (before the rain came in). we QUICKLY learned that this hike was not going to be much fun at all. The mosquito's were HORRIBLE!! We practially had to run through the wooded area to keep away from the bugs and were glad to make it to open field/sunny area where we weren't getting eaten alive, bad part was, about 75% of our hike that morning was on wooded paths. I didn't get many pictures on our 'hike/run' because the bugs were so bad (and we were constantly re-applying bug spray) Here are some I did get:
mosquitoS
bee on flower
swatting mosquitos
park trail bridge
mosquito
daisy harpo

Once making it out of the wooded trail area we took another trail across the highway over by Charles Lindberg's boyhood house and along the Mississippi River. The bugs were bad over here as well, but not as bad. We didn't go into the museum because it costs money. We really didn't feel like paying $14 to rush through the museum since Harpo would have to wait in the car. If it was free we didn't mind running through it really quick, but it didn't look too exciting anyway.
ms riverkyle ms river

After our mad dash around the bulk of the trails - so we could say we did them - we fixed lunch then headed into the nearby town 'Little Falls' to see what they had to offer. We walked around a couple of parks there that are along the Mississippi River.
little falls MS riverdam
little falls MS river

This one was a really dinky park, but an interesting story behind it. This is the boyhood town of Charles Lindbergh and this park was based on the principle of being sister cities with the France town Charles landed in. At first we thought it was really strange they had a France flag, but after we read the sign we understood.
sister cities flagssister cities sign

We picked up some ice, had some sundae's at Perkins (since we couldn't find a dairy queen) and headed back to camp. We read a little, played some card games and a few rounds of washers before fixing dinner and heading to bed. I made the first 'washer bulls eye'!!
bullseye washers
making fire for dinner
harpo stand

The next morning we fixed breakfast again and loaded up camp. How can this not make you smile:
harpo head out window
Doesn't he look so happy!?!

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