Monday, August 23, 2010

Camping at Itasca Day 1

Before we had kids ("pre-K") we went camping 4-5 times each summer. Minnesota has the most beautiful State Parks and it is relatively inexpensive form of entertainment that we both really love. The summer that Karter was born of course we didn't go...camping with a newborn would be torturous...last summer we went twice, and were really looking forward to going this year. One of the major obstacles is the amount of stuff that we take with two children and fitting it all in the Tracker, so the weekend we bought the van in June we booked our first (and only) camping trip of the year.
We have always wanted to go "up north", since that is what all of the true Minnesotans do and we wanted to experience it at least once. Since Kristoffer was willing to take a Friday off work we picked Itasca State Park that is about 4 hours north of our house. Just looking at it on the map we were excited...it is Minnesota's oldest state park, has 100 lakes, is 32,000 acres and has the headwaters on the Mississippi River...what more could we ask for!!
We woke up early Friday morning and loaded up the van to set out on our adventure!
About an hour into the trip we stopped at McDonald's for breakfast and had to convince Karter to go in! They had a picture of Ronald McDonald on the the building and he is VERY scared of clowns!

With only a couple of stops along the way we made it to Itasca right at lunch time. We were lucky and no one was in our campsite the night before so we were able to set up early.

We attempted to have the boys nap, but only this cute little fella napped! Karter was way too excited to be in the tent to actually sleep.

Since naps were a no go, we set out on our first hike.

We hiked about 1.5 miles to the headwaters of the Mississippi. We cross the Mississippi all the time around here and it was amazing to see how it starts and actually be able to wade in it.

Karter thoroughly enjoyed playing in the water.

Kado was happy to be out of the carrier.





We lured Karter away from the water with a little snack before heading back to our site for the night.

Our redneck clothes line!

While I was preparing our feast, Kristoffer was in charge of entertaining the kids. It was fun to watch them all play...they dug in the dirt, threw frisbees, collected sticks and rocks and hugged trees!

Kaden was sneaky, he would play happily and the next thing we knew he would have a handful of dirt ready to put in his mouth!

We put Kaden to bed but let Karter stay up a little longer and sit around the campfire with us.

He was pretty happy to stay up late!

We all slept great that night and were excited for what Day 2 would hold...tune in tomorrow for Day 2!
Here is a video of us playing the Mississippi...

4 comments:

Kyler said...

Glad to hear that you could get out and enjoy God's Country. Looking forward to day 2.

Gramaw T said...

That's a busy little place! You are brave souls, camping with 2 little ones! Looking forward to Day 2... Love you all!

Kara said...

Looks like a ton of fun! Glad you all got to go out camping again! Can't wait for Day 2.

Anique and Kamaron said...

That's a fun trip! We definitely want to visit northern MN in the near future. Looking forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks!