We love camping and it is great to have two boys who love it too. In June we drove to Iowa City for my Seward Concert Band and opted to camp out for two nights. We enjoyed some midnight views of some very vocal and flying Great Horned Owls before testing our new family tent through a very impressive 2 inches in 2 hours downpour (we stayed completely dry!). In the photo below you can see the whole family hiking out after a beautiful 4th of July night at the Afton State Park backpack campground. This was our first backpacking trip with both kids and we were so out of practice we managed to leave behind most of our food, the adult's sleeping bags, and Hillary's rain coat, among other items. But all was good, especially after some other campers donated their bag of marshmallows to us.
In mid-October we headed out with about everyone else in Minnesota for a weekend of record breaking temperatures and fleeting fall color. We were aiming for the gorgeous Frontenac State Park but the unseasonably warm weather and our rambling trip via apple orchards and such got us there late afternoon only to find the campground was full. Guess we should have made that reservation after all. But our poor planning led us to discover a fantastic campground five miles south, Lake City's Hok-Si-La Campground. This campground has a really great model- cars are allowed in to drop-off and pickup your gear but then must be parked in the parking lot. The greatly-reduced traffic makes it safer for kids and eliminates the annoying opening and closing of car doors that typically punctuates car camping.
The best thing about Hok--Si-La is the readily accessible long sand beach along the shores of Lake Pepin. We had the best time building "beaver dams" as the last blast of July weather touched our October day.
Rental car camping weekends have another bonus- the kids (and the dog) get to ride in a car! Here is the happy, and tired crew.
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