Friday, July 17, 2009

Nerstrand Big Woods State Park - Camping

Five nights sleeping in a bed is enough! We decided to go camping for the weekend. We still haven’t checked out Lorrie’s newest new tent so it’s time to break that one in. I got her the REI Kingdom “Queendom” 4 for her birthday and we took that one out. But then we decided since it’s only for car camping that we could splurge and go bigger with the Kingdom 6. The best thing about this bigger one is that I can stand straight up in it! I haven’t had that since I was a kid camping in a big canvas monster tent!

As we were trying to decide where to go, Nancy from Minnesota Outdoor Women sent an email to the group saying she was going to be camping at Nerstrand Big Woods State Park. We decided to try and get the Non-reservable walk-in site there so that Lorrie wouldn’t have to drive far after work. If that site wasn’t available, our backup plan was to head down to Rice Lake State Park. I drove out to Nerstrand on Friday morning and the walk-in site was available! Yay! Back home to pack. It’s weird camping so close to home! Lol

It was quiet when I was there in the morning. When we got there around 5pm, it was packed. And noisy! The group site across from us was taken by a large group of, from what we heard, Mayo medical students. They were SO loud! But it was evening so no big deal. Not exactly the noises we want to hear when we’re camping but at least they weren’t playing obnoxious music!

Nancy was already there. So she came over to visit briefly while we were putting up our tent. She’s quite short so she had some interesting comments to make about how tall the tent is.

The rest of the evening was spent having burgers around the fire and just relaxing. Nancy came over a little later with Sadie, her little Yorkie. I made Mocha Au Lait for us… my first time so I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. It was scrumptious, if I do say so myself! They Mayo people were still pretty noisy so Lorrie went to the office to ask what happens if they are noisy at 2am when the park office is closed. Apparently there’s a ranger that goes through the park throughout the night to help keep things in order. We shall see...

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