After spending the day (July 3rd) at Elm Creek Park Reserve with some good friends (see: Part I) we headed up to Hinkley to St. Croix State Park. I made the reservations back in February and had been looking forward to this trip for so long! Of course things didn't go as planned haha!
1. My mom and dad were supposed to come and spend a few days with us up there. They rented a hotel room at the nearby casino to stay at and then would come spend the days and evenings with us. Well, my brother has some trouble getting his dogs over to England so they were dog sitting for awhile and so my dad had to stay home with them so my mom still came because my sister's family was going to come for a day or two also.
2. We definitely didn't plan for Elsie to get sick. Wednesday night, Elsie came down with a pretty high fever (104.3). You could tell too. She was tired and not in the mood to each much. This meant a late evening trip to the closest store to sell motrin at 9:00 at night which was a Walmart about 35 minutes away. She didn't sleep real well that night and I was worried about the fever since we were supposed to take her in if it got to 105 or above and it was getting pretty close. She woke up Thursday morning without a fever but she was definitely not feeling 100%. Her fever ended up coming back again later Thursday night. :( Thankfully, by Friday morning it was gone for good!
3. Because Elsie had a fever my sister's family decided not to come and hang out with us-which I don't blame them. My poor mom was stuck with just us and we weren't too much fun with a sick kiddo...
4. Boy the bugs were terrible! We were constantly covering ourselves in spray, couldn't have a fire because we were getting eaten alive, and while at the campsite we had to stay in our screen tent or camper to avoid the mosquitoes.
5. We had some camper issues-our water line got all screwy and John had to rig up some contraption to keep the water from spraying out from the fresh water intake line and our electric water heater kept shorting out and blowing the breaker at the electrical box. Which meant the air wouldn't work which is fine if we didn't have Cinder who had to stay in the camper while we would go out on hikes since she couldn't walk with us.
6. Although this wasn't a bad thing we ended up leaving early because we had Allie's birthday party so we paid for two nights of camping that we didn't end up using... (all worth it though) :)
Well I think those are all the things that went wrong or not as planned. It may seem like it was a disastrous weekend but there were definitely some high moments too.
When we arrived at the park we got to see a little bear cub dash across the road.
Thursday morning we got up and drove around the park. It is a pretty big park covering quite a few acres. To get from one end to the other it took a good 30 minutes. It is such a beautiful park.
A couple of views of the Kettle River which flows into the St. Croix River.
This area was called "Head of the Rapids"...hmmm looks pretty calm to me.
My mom met us for lunch and we hung out around the campsite for awhile. We walked up to the nature center and to the store where we all got yummy ice cream treats. We played some Yahtzee in the camper and then after Elsie went to bed we hung out in the screen tent some more. After my mom left, John and I played a round or two of Skip-Bo and of course I won :)
Unfortunately this is the only pic of Elsie is her "4th of July Dress"
Friday was a much better day and I would say the best day of them all! Elsie woke up happy and fever free. We went out for a bike ride on the paved trail. We made it about 2.5 miles in before Elsie became VERY unhappy. Although paved, it was still pretty bumpy and she didn't enjoy it in the trailer so much.
After we got back from the bike ride we had a little snack and got to see a turtle up close as it made its way through the campground. Elsie thought that was pretty neat!
Elsie absolutely loves holding Cinder's leash and "walking her".
When we got back from the bike ride, John helped the neighboring family find thier little boy who had gone off with another boy to his campsite-the mom was so worried because she had no idea where he was. Which I would be too! John found him and told him he better get back to his site-he was in big trouble haha.
We took a late morning walk down to the canoe launch. It was just a beautiful day, not too hot, with a nice breeze blowing. Elsie must have enjoyed it because she actually fell asleep in the stroller-something she hasn't done in forever!
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After lunch we walked up to the store once again for some more ice cream treats and a cute little "St. Croix State Park" t-shirt for Elsie. She loved being able to walk the whole way with her Daddy!
While leaving the store we actually ran into some old family friends of John family. They all used to show longhorn cattle together and were actually coming down to his parents place the following weekend. What are the odds...small world.
After our treats we packed up the camped and headed back to my parents so we could be close by for Allie's party on Saturday. We got there in time to take a little swim in the pool :)
A couple of other notes: I absolutely LOVED the park despite the skeeters :). Our site was huge and bigger than many of the others and there was a lot of space for Elsie to play which was nice but...all the space was to the opposite side of the camper. So to get to everything we had to walk all the way around our camper vs. walking out the door of the camper and having the fire ring, screen tent, etc right there. Not a huge deal but a little inconvenient. It was also pretty nice because it was extremely private. From the fire ring and picnic table you couldn't see any other campsite which was great! Also, for reference we stayed in the Paint Rocks Spring Campground at site #114E.
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