2023 Camping Retro

Our Memorial Day weekend camping trip that we'd booked at Mirror Lake near WI Dells a year in advance was "repurposed" on short notice when Meg and Ben found out they were being transferred to the Netherlands and had only a few weeks to prepare for the move. The weekend became a going-away party/packing & moving weekend.

The two of us enjoyed our first trip to Ishnala Supper Club on Friday night. It was magnificent, and what a view. We were grateful to have a mellow dog who was happy to people-watch from the car while we enjoyed dinner.

Brandy Old Fashioned- of course

Will arrived early Sat morning, and we drove the 1 hour to the kids' apartment. We went to the farmer's market one last time together, got coffee, helped with packing, then took them out to dinner that night. On Sunday, we played volleyball for hours at the park, and I grilled hotdogs for everyone.

On Monday, we drove back into town to pack up a bunch of boxes and items that were coming home with us for storage. Both cars were filled to the brim, then we stopped back at Mirror lake to pick up the camper. We didn't have electricity at the site, and learned 3 days was too long, and had completely bottomed out the battery. Because we were in Madison all three days, we didn't really get to enjoy Mirror Lake- the camper became more of a distantly-located hotel at night. But we made it work, and everything got home safely.

Will enjoying borrowing the big TV

In the depths of January, I'd booked Rice Lake State Park for the 2nd weekend in June, but after two consecutive weekends at the cabin, Andy didn't want to have yet another weekend out of town, so I cancelled it. I'd like to try getting to this park sometime. We'd also missed a weekend at Marion County park in Iowa April 28-30 because it was booked well in advance and ended up being just after our trip to Ireland. Some other time to get to the tulip festival in Pella, too.

In July, we took Caleb and Issac to Pine Point County Park in WI, which would normally be about a 2.5 hour drive, but with Friday rush hour traffic with construction got to be much longer. Rather than getting in late and trying to cook dinner, we made a stop at A&W which was much appreciated by the boys. Saturday afternoon we had a big thunderstorm that lasted several hours, but we made the best of it. 

Make-your-own campfire pizzas

The second week of Sep, we went back to Whitewater State Park. We enjoyed a Friday night stop at the Moose Lodge in St Charles. Andy tried some trout fishing (no luck) while I enjoyed some hammock time, we got in a couple of hikes, and it rained Sat afternoon into the evening so we went into town for dinner at a sports bar.

Pizza and beer at the St Charles Moose Lodge

Espresso break

On a bit of a whim, we booked Sat night at Fort Ridgely in late Sep. We enjoyed a couple of great hikes, but it rained on Sat evening and we had to scramble to cook a couple of hamburgers before we were rained out, and spent the evening watching an old movie in the camper. It rained all night and made for more clean up than usual. Of our 3 traditional camping weekends so far, it struck us we're 3/3 on getting heavy rain at inopportune times, despite the particularly dry summer we've had.

We enjoyed camping at Flandrau and going to the New Ulm Oktoberfest the first weekend in Oct, with Will and Cara. It was the first camping weekend we didn't get rain. We had dinner at Turner Hall on Friday night. On Saturday, we watched the parade, then Andy entered the sauerkraut-eating contest (and lost), we took a 3 PM tour of Schell's Brewery, then had dinner at Kaiserhoff.

Turner Hall

Sauerkraut shots at the parade

Schell's tasting room

Kaiserhoff

We winterized the camper the Sunday we got home from Oktoberfest, which was a good thing, because the temperatures suddenly dropped. On Oct 28th we dropped Horace off for his winter stay at the Education building. See you in the spring!