Camping 2026

We started the season with a bang in early May by driving to Pella IA for their annual Tulip Festival. I'd been wanting to visit this festival for years, and I had a campsite booked well in advance for the 2023 festival, but we ended up going to Ireland during that time instead. Then our spring trips to Japan (2024) and Egypt (2025) thwarted the next two years. These are high-quality problems, as my sister says.

We left at 6:30 on Thursday night after Andy was finished coaching (another year with Bloomington High School boys' volleyball) and I used a hot spot to facilitate a church Mission committee meeting in the car at 7. We made it to our campsite, Robert's Creek West in Marion County, at 11:30 PM and were in bed at midnight. The next morning we left camp without coffee and breakfast, planning to get breakfast in town, which was only a few miles away. Pella is absolutely charming, and they get a huge turnout for this festival. Unfortunately, there weren't many tulips left to look at as there had been a few hot days in April that shortened their longevity.

We started by waiting in line for the Jaarsma bakery, where I bought a bunch of treats, including a Dutch letter with almond filling. The bakery line grew through the day, to as many as 50-60 people in line. We ate breakfast in a cafe (Harriet was invited in with her vest on). We toured the Pella historical village & Vermeer windmill (eating another Dutch letter at the museum bakery). The parade was extensive- so many participants and marching bands. We got an afternoon beer at the Peanut Pub and then got Mexican takeout to eat back at camp. 

A few surviving blooms

Who doesn't love a display of wooden shoes?

We got to go to the top

Making Dutch letters at the museum

Parade and clog dancing

The tulip princesses love Harriet

Since we'd done a pretty bang-up job of seeing Pella in one day, on Sat morning we started the day with fried Spam and Dutch pastries, then headed to the Amana Colonies, another site we'd been wanting to see for quite a while. We spent the day exploring, and had a filling German lunch at Ronneburg. 

Lunch at Ronneburg

We left about 3 PM with the plan of making it partway home and finding a spot to park the camper for the night. We stopped at the Acme greenhouse, then continued north, deciding to press on to the Bass Pro in Owatonna for a new fish finder for Andy. At this point, we decided to just keep going home, arriving late and happy to hit the bed.

We had Beaver Creek booked for the weekend of May 29-31 but decided to cancel so we could do more work on projects at the stuga ahead of a new deck being built. In July the camper was a useful guest bedroom for Sally when we needed an extra one at the stuga.

Labor Day

We tried a new state park, Scenic, 45 miles north of Grand Rapids. It took us almost 5 hours to get there on Friday afternoon (traffic, plus some questionable guidance from Google maps). When we arrived about 8:30, there was a camper already parked in our reserved campsite. We called the ranger and she sent us to an unlisted overflow spot, then the rangers corrected the issue Sat morning so we were able to move to our booked spot. The towering Norway pines in the park are majestic. We did two great hikes- one on a glacial esker and one to see the fire tower (fenced off). There is a great CCC lodge in the park. We rented a canoe and took Harriet on a canoe ride to the other side of the park and had a picnic at one of the canoe-in camp sites. We cooked a smoked sausage, onions and peppers dish Sat night and pork chops with onions and sour cherries on Sun. I made apple crisp. On Monday morning Andy got in one last kayak then we hooked up and left for the drive home about 9:30 AM.

View from the hammock

Majestic Norway pine

October

Our 2-week trip to Utah and back gets its own post.

We took the camper in to Fleet Farm have it's bearings packed, $50, and it's ready to store for the winter. We stored it at the State Fair again, this time in the Horse Barn rather than the usual Education building.

Dropping off for horse barn storage