Category: State Parks

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Minnesota National Parks State Parks WanderLog

Cosmos, St. Cloud, Itasca & The Voyageurs – Northern Minnesota

Travel Dates: July 16 -30, 2015

After 4 weeks in Minneapolis, it was time to leave! We headed out bright and early heading west for Cosmos and a paragliding competition. We had been invited by the hosts to come check it out and even get in a tandem flight! It felt so good to finally be leaving the Twin Cities area and headed out to explore more of the state.

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We met up with Anna and her family who were hosting the Midwest Corn Alps Paragliding Competition, and even though it was crazy hot and humid we had a fantastic time!

Check out the full details here: 2nd Annual Midwest Corn Alps Paragliding Competition

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Leaving the competition we headed for an all Airstream RV Park in Clear Lake Minnesota. We had heard on Instagram that it was a favorite of another traveling family and decided to check it out. We went swimming in the pool and then joined in on the Mexican pot luck and pinata party for the kids. Everyone was extremely welcoming and super nice!

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Conveniently it also put us close to St. Cloud and some college friends of ours. They took us to a local swimming hole called Quarry Park & Nature Preserve where we spent the afternoon.

Minnesota is Warmer Than I Thought It Would Be

On Sunday at church, the leaders announced the nearby town of Brainerd, MN needed volunteers for some disaster cleanup. A tornado had touched down in the town and leveled a lot of trees and generally made a mess of things.

Since we don’t do enough service as it is, we decided to take the day off and drive up and help. We cleared brush and logs from a driveway and the kids were fantastic little helpers!

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That evening we drove to the Cuyuna Country State Recreation area and found a spot in the nearly empty Portsmouth Campground. This was a total shot in the dark, but I had heard from a girl in Minneapolis that the mountain biking here was superb. It didn’t disappoint. I still dream about those trails….

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Next up we went to Itasca State Park where the headwaters of the Mississippi River are located. We found a great spot in the campground and headed out to enjoy the park. Since we were unable to get great cell signal, we decided to make the most of our time there.

We swam in the lake, attending a ranger fishing program, and rock hopped across the Mississippi River. Much easier to do here than down in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We planned a great hike this morning, and failed during execution. The first two miles along the lakeshore turned out to be a breakfast buffet, with insects doing the feasting and us as the selection of food.
Our repellent was insufficient.

The best way to escape the bugs was to move faster, and we cleared that section of trail in record time.

Our plans to hike to the observation tower were scrapped, and we returned home via a longer but decidedly less buggy route. We still hiked 7.5 miles today, so even in our failure we won.” – Sam

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“After dinner, @jesscurrenand I snuck away for a short bike date. 8 miles of paved bike path with some ridiculously good chocolate in the middle. And when you find a random patch of cell service for the first time in days, it is worth checking your voicemail.” – Sam

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We spent the weekend at Lake Bemidji State Park, mostly just taking it easy and sticking out as some of the only “non-weekenders” in the campground. Lots of work, some laundry, and church on Sunday.

“Our afternoon wander yesterday took us into a nearby bog. Andrew and Rachel surprised us with their knowledge of carnivorous plants. We saw two types on our wander. Shown here is the Pitcher Plant, which attracts insects with a sweet smell, uses tiny hairs to prevent them from leaving, and drowns them in liquid. The plant captures bugs to gain minerals not found in the soil.” -Sam 

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Monday morning we drove north to Voyageurs National Park and Wooden Frog Campground. This turned out to be one of our favorite stops so far on our journey. The National Park is amazing, full of history and great ranger programs.

We also rented a canoe for a few hours one morning and paddled on Lake Kabetogama.

Check out our blog post for more details: 5 Interesting & Fun Things to Do with Kids at Voyageurs National Park

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Categories
Arizona Biking Hiking State Parks

Lost Dutchman State Park: Hiking Flat Iron & Introducing Our Kids to MTB

 

We had heard from fellow travelers that Lost Dutchman State Park was pretty amazing, so when we swung through Phoenix last winter we decided to give it a try. Not really knowing the layout of the park beforehand, we managed to snag a pretty sweet spot with an epic view of the Superstition Mountains.

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When We Visited: March 14-19, 2015
Ages of Kids: 9.5, 7.5, 4.5
Site #: 103
Website: http://azstateparks.com/Parks/LODU/
Link to Flatiron Trail

After a brief, but dramatic, total freak out by me (read all about that here) we settled into the park and really loved it. A lot. The Superstition Mountains are ragged, majestic, and beautiful and are quite the prominent feature of the area.

We had friends staying in the overflow area at the same time (@livinginthemomentum) so the kids had some great play time with them in addition to earning their state park Jr. Ranger Badge. Our site was water and electric only, but the showers were great and we managed to go all 6 days without needing to dump the tanks. Hooray!

My two favorite activities, however were: introducing my kids to mountain biking, and hiking to the top of Flat Iron with Sam.

Introducing Our Kids to Mountain Biking

Around the outer edge of the park is a 4 mile mountain bike loop. While that may not seem like a long ride to some, it was perfect for introducing our kids to mountain biking. The trail was pretty smooth and flowy in some places, but also had some good ups and down through the various washes. The kids were all pretty tentative at first, but soon I couldn’t keep up with them as I hung back and made sure Cara did okay on her strider bike.

Our biggest success was just taking it slow and letting the kids learn at their own pace. Riding on dirt is definitely different than pavement and just takes some getting used to. We taught the kids to stand up on their pedals and get behind their seats on the downhill, and to keep their pedals level so they don’t whack them on rocks. Those were the two big lessons of the week.

Sam and I were also able to ride the loop a few times (it took us about 30 minutes), and it was great to get back into the saddle. I don’t think either one of us had really mountain biked in years.

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Hiking Flatiron

Right up against the the boundaries of the state park is the Tonto National Forest with the ragged Superstition Mountains. One of the more popular trails is Flatiron which tops out at 4861 feet elevation with some serious gain over the last mile or so.

Since we knew the hike would be too much for the kids, Sam and I decided to wake up at 5am one morning and tackle it. Rachel is getting old enough that we feel comfortable leaving her in charge of the other two (really it’s probably Andrew’s and Cara’s ages that matter more – they are quite independent). She can manage pulling out cereal in the morning and we just told them to stay in the trailer to play and we’d call from the top to see how things were going. We also knew we had friends nearby in case anything went seriously wrong, and she knows the phone number for grandma if she has non-emergency questions.

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The hike was brutal. Up to the Basin it was a pretty even uphill, and then after that it was some serious rock scrambling. The trail was marked on rocks with blue/white dots since there wasn’t actually anywhere to make a trail, and in some places we had to guess where it went but overall I felt we did pretty well.

We made it to the top, had a small snack, enjoyed the view and then started back down the trail.

Holy people. I’m so glad we left as early as we did because the trail was CROWDED on the way back down. Especially after the Basin. So, my advice if you want to hike this trail during Spring Break: get out of bed and get yourself up the mountain early. It’ll be way better.

Overall, I’m super happy we tackled it, and the kids did great on their own and were a little disappointed when we got back (heaven help us when they are teenagers).

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We absolutely loved staying at this park, but since there are a few others in the area (McDowell Mountain being top on our list) we’ll probably wait awhile before staying here again. Definitely recommend it though!

Categories
Arizona Giveaways State Parks

Tiny House, Big Backyard Free Printable

Tiny House Quote

We’ve had quite the week so far at Lost Dutchman State Park near Phoenix, AZ. Along with a new environment came new challenges, personal discoveries, and some growing pains. Through our conversations, Sam and I kept returning to our deliberate decision to live the way we are because of the mental shift it created in our lives.

Later that day on Instagram, Sam posted this quote with a beautiful photo of the Airstream with the Superstition Mountains behind it, “Living in a tiny, shiny house is our deliberate choice to live more fully. It moves us to explore, seek adventure, learn, and appreciate this world we live in. Small house, big backyard.”

In the comments @boldadventure challenged us to turn the quote into a photo, so I did a little Photoshop magic and thought I’d share here on the blog!

Always remember that YOU make your decisions about how you live each day and each day is a gift!

Free Download available as an 11×14 print!

Categories
California State Parks

Trinidad, Patrick’s Point State Park, and Lots of Blackberries in California

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Our visit to Patrick’s Point and the Trinidad area was most notable for it’s amazing blackberries. I’ll get to details there, but first, let’s talk about fun on north coast beaches.

When We Visited: August 10-14, 2014

Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 4

Where We Stayed: 4 Nights at Sounds of the Sea RV Park, 1 Night at Trinidad Head State Park

Our general policy is to not make reservations ahead of time (more freedom that way), so we were unable to spend much time at Patrick’s Point State park itself as it was booked pretty solid. We opted instead for a commercial RV park that came recommended by a few fellow travelers. Sounds of the Sea RV Park is nice and conveniently located between Trinidad and the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park for exploring (the wifi was even really great, which saved us from a severe lack of Verizon during our stay there).

After getting settled and eating dinner our first night, we walked to Palmer’s Point (inside Patrick’s Point State Park) for a short wander and some tide pool exploration. The stairs down to the tide pools were nice on the way down, and gave us quite a workout on the way back up. Cara wore her buzzwings on the hike which always makes us happy. Lately, she hasn’t been wearing her wings as much, perhaps as a sign she’s growing up?  At some point she will be done wearing them completely, but until then, we’ll take the wings whenever they make an appearance.

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Our love of tide pool exploration started in San Diego last spring, and we have enjoyed discovering and exploring the variety of pools we’ve had the chance to visit. Mostly we’ve learned to be patient and to look carefully. It seems that we find a lot of anemones, and occasionally luck out with a seastar or some crabs.

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The next evening, we decided to hike to the top of Trinidad Head. We’d heard from some friends that the view was pretty stellar. Parking at the south end of Trinidad State Beach, we piled out of the truck to start our hike up on the Head. On a whim, we first took a peak at the beach and the fog rolling in led to some immediate photos for a few minutes before our hike. Though the fog limited our views later on, it made for fantastic photos down below.

If you don’t believe that it actually looked that awesome, consider the behind the scenes picture below, taken with a totally different camera. When Jess wants the kids to run, she’ll often yell “Come get me!” and this time, they really did. They piled right on.

Our hike on the Head itself was pleasant, but not particularly scenic. The vegetation is thick enough that much of the trail is cut through tall thick bushes, only opening to the views here and there at a viewpoint. The aforementioned fog did an excellent job masking any views there, so we mostly had a great hike with an ocean soundtrack. We found out later there’s an EdVentures Quest patch you can earn on this hike and were tempted to hike it again JUST for the patch (and maybe a clear view?) but didn’t make it enough of a priority in the time we had. There’s always next time.

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Okay, on to the blackberries. Here we go. For those of you that live in Oregon, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal?” But for us, walking down the side of the road picking as many as we can and shoving them in our faces is a treat. I can only imagine what we looked like to people driving by.

In addition to All-You-Can-Eat Roadside blackberries, right behind the Airstream and along nearly every walkway and border in the RV Park, were huge patches of blackberries. We picked and ate, and picked and ate some more. Finally, Jess got the idea to actually make something out of them and googled up some dessert recipes. During our several days there, we made two blackberry crisp style desserts and some fresh blackberry pancake syrup. There was something very surreal about eating a dish that was picked 10 feet to your left and baked 5 feet to your right. Hyper-local dessert! Yum!

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By carefully watching the online reservation system, Jess was able to snag us a one night stay at Patrick’s Point State Park Thursday night before we left town. One night wasn’t much, but it did get us into the park and gave us easy access to the activities there.

While we were in Patricks Point, we met up with Shelley Beinsfield and her kids. Jess had met them at Prairie Creek State Park a few days earlier while working on Jr. Ranger Badges with the kids. They were in town for the summer and  visiting as many as the state parks as possible to earn the EdVenture Quest Patches. We joined them in Arcata for a swim at the public pool Tuesday night, and they joined us on our first day at the State Park for a hike. It was a blast having so many little hikers to entertain each other. We worked our activity books for their patches and enjoyed some clear views of the ocean and landscape.

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Just down the hill from our campsite was agate beach, known for the ease of finding the beautiful clear stones polished by sand and sea. During our last morning, we walked down the hill to the beach to explore despite the foggy, slightly wet weather. We found plenty of beautiful rocks there, but none of them were actually agates (don’t tell the kids!). We had a fabulous time anyway enjoying the fog wrapped coastline.

Trinidad_49Patrick’s Point & Trinidad was a wonderful stop on our travels. It was an excellent break from the summer heat, and I loved having so much fog around. We had hoped that as we traveled north, our blackberry bliss would continue. We did have some more blackberries, but Patrick’s Point and the Sounds of the Sea RV Park turned out to be the highlight of our berry enjoyment.

Categories
California Featured Destination National Parks State Parks

The Redwood National & State Parks – California

We spent 2 weeks exploring The Redwood State and National Parks in California. Check out our favorite activities!

At first, this National Park was completely confusing. Is it a State Park? Run by the NPS? Did they have a Junior Ranger Program? Where exactly was it located? Turns out there’s a fairly simple answer for most of those questions.

When We Visited: August 6-19, 2014

Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 4

Where We Stayed: Burlington Campground (Humboldt Redwoods State Park), Sounds of the Sea RV Park (near Trinidad), Shoreline RV Park (Crescent City near Jedediah). We tried to get into both Prairie Creek Campground and Jedediah Smith Campground (both looked FABULOUS) but no luck. If you are visiting in the summer – which we definitely recommend – try and get reservations as early out as possible. Del Norte Campground also looked decent, but we didn’t end up staying there.

BONUS: Before or after have your kids read “Operation Redwood“. Its a super fun book about a couple of kids out to save an endagerned grove of redwood trees. Both of our older kids loved it!

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The Redwood National & State Parks is exactly what it claims to be. A partnership between the California State Parks and the National Park System. There are both State Park Rangers and National Park rangers at each visitor center, and your National Parks Pass (America the Beautiful Pass) will get you past the fee booths in any of the participating parks. The park consists of : Humboldt Redwoods SP, Prairie Creek SP, Del Norte SP, and Jedediah Smith SP. There’s one overview map & newsletter for the entire system, as well is individual brochures for each state park. We found both to be incredibly useful.

The State Parks were created and run first, and then the national government got involved and designated a lot of the area as wilderness to protect the old growth redwood trees from logging operations. There are areas of trees that have never been logged and they are beautiful! From what we could tell, the partnership was great! The NP rangers helped with the state park programs as well as generally upkeep around the parks.

Junior Ranger Programs

There are A LOT of opportunities in the area to earn Jr. Ranger Badges and Patches! Not only is there the National Park Jr. Ranger booklet (which, as always, is a self-guided program), but during the summer there is also a California State Park program and it is AMAZING. So amazing in fact, that I detailed a post about it HERE.

So, where should you visit? Which is the best area for seeing BIG trees? Here’s our opinions about each of the places we visited and what we liked about that particular area:

Humboldt State Park & Avenue of the Giants

Farther south than most people venture, this park was our favorite! We had seen Instagram photos of friends driving their Airstreams through the Avenue of the Giants and knew we wanted to follow in their tracks. It was worth it! Its a narrower side road, but winds among the tallest, prettiest, redwood trees we have ever seen. About halfway along the scenic drive there are a few campgrounds, and we managed to pick up a reservation at Burlington, right next to the visitor center and Junior Ranger programs. It was perfect! We also heard that Burlington is the only campground in the area to really be UNDER the trees. We heard rumors that some of the other campgrounds are not among the redwoods (but we didn’t visit so don’t quote me on that one!).

Redwood Forests_02One of the reasons we really liked Humboldt was the variety of short walks to see BIG trees. Some of the biggest trees in the whole park system are located here and they are easy walks for little legs.  Many of the biggest trees are also labeled with the height and other interesting facts.
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Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

The kids and I went on a scouting trip. Sometimes when I get to a location and am not sure what the deal is, I’ll round up the kids and we’ll drive around for an hour or two visiting places and deciding what exactly there is to do in the area before we rope Sam in for the grand adventure. This particular afternoon we set out to explore the Redwoods near Prairie Creek State Park.. We stopped by the Kuchel Visitor Center as it was the first visitor center inside the designated National Park area. We planned to pick up our National Park Jr. Ranger Badges and get some more information on timing for the Jr. Ranger Programs and the EdVenture Quests.

The state park ranger on duty was a goldmine of information. He was awesome. Best trails to hike with kids, things to see, where to get more info on ranger programs, etc. I left feeling very well prepared, along with 3 National Park Jr. Ranger booklets for the kids to work on. There wasn’t anything to really see (that we were interested in anyway) close to the Kuchel Visitor Center, so we drove up to the Prairie Creek State Park Visitor Center and spent a few hours up there earning 2 patches, attending a program to earn a stamp, and working on our NPS booklet. It was great!

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Aptly named “Prairie Creek”, there is a giant meadow outside the visitor center frequented by herds of Elk.

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Fern Canyon

“Wait a minute. Where are we going? How long is this drive? Are you SURE?” Sam poured out question after question as we would through a fairly curvy, dusty, out of the way road on our way to Fern Canyon.

“It’s okay. Just keep going. Everyone says it is worth the drive,” I replied calmly from the passenger seat.

“Okaaaaay, ” he answered skeptically.

After about 30 minutes we finally reached the ranger station (what a commute!), flashed our America the Beautiful Pass and drove another 15 minutes past the beach (it looked awesome!), through a few creeks (seriously?) and finally arrived at the Fern Canyon trail head and parking. There were quite a few other cars, so I knew we weren’t completely crazy.

It was beautiful! Ferns draped the sides of the canyon as water dripped down and formed a small creak threading through large, fallen logs. We didn’t hike the entire loop, but mostly went through the fern-y part (is that even a word?) and turned around to hike back. The kids had so much fun climbing over, under, and around all of the logs. I can’t promise they didn’t get a little wet.

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Jedediah Redwood State Park

The last of the parks, I think this one might be one of the most popular. The biggest thing Jedediah has going for it is the Smith River. It is crystal clear, shallow, and runs right through the park. The kids were so mad we hadn’t brought their swimming suits with us! We drove up early and spent almost the entire day there. We started out with a Jr. Ranger Program about Cones and Conifers. Super interesting. I loved how he took us all on a walk to find conifers out in the park after explaining and showing examples.

After a quick lunch, we managed an 8 mile hike through some pretty great trees! I felt like they weren’t as large and obvious as Humboldt, but still very pretty!

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The Redwoods are definitely worth seeing, and there are lots of options! Which spot you go to depends on how much time you have and what your goal is. Hopefully this helps with that decision!