Wild River Adventure

I was lucky enough to be invited to join Kirstin, Jeff and the boys for a camping outing at Wild River State Park. Judy was in Rugby, ND visiting her mom and I was available and happy to go. They went ahead to find a first-come-first-served spot and I joined them after work. The journey took me across county road 95 through North Branch. Little did we know that Hay Days was going on and traffic was jammed up for miles. Hay Days is snowmobile races on hay. They expected 20,000 people but got double that. CR95 is a small narrow 2 lane road with 2 foot shoulders. There was no place for the traffic to go. I did get through and made it to the park and found camp already setup and everyone waiting. Of course I told them I would call when I got to the park but guess what? Zero bars on the cell phone. We decided to go on a short hike to the St Croix River but it turned out to be much longer that a short hike. The boys were getting tired on the way to the river and we still had to get back. Liam brought his binoculars.

And so did Logan.

Kellan was just along for the ride. The mosquitoes were terrible. And bug spray had no effect. So it was swat, swat and swat.

We made it to the river and everyone had fun throwing rocks and sticks into the river. The way back was not on paved paths but just a cut path through the trees. The boys were really tired by then. I put Logan on my shoulders and Kirstin gave Liam a piggy back ride. As long as Logan was on my shoulders, the bugs didn't bother me. They go for the high point - Logan. Thanks Logan. He did a great job swatting them.

We made it back in time to start a fire, make foil dinners, smores and go to bed. You can see Kellan's face all bug bitten and he is ready to go to sleep.

On the other hand, Logan was tired but he was fighting going to bed. Literally. He and Liam were going to share the bed but poor Logan ended up being requested to sleep on the floor.

I think that Liam really wanted to go to sleep but was excited to be camping.

The next day the real adventure began. The Alpine slide. The view at the top of the lift.

This is the view of daddy and Logan at the bottom of the run.

A short video of a portion of the track. I had the camera going the whole way down with Liam but it was way to big to post. So I cut the portion of the run where there is a blind dip and an immediate left turn. It caught Liam's stomach. We went down the slide twice and then took some laps around the go-kart track. I again I had Liam with me. I tried to lap Jeff and Logan but I think there was a heat problem with my car because after about three laps, the car would slow down on the last half of the lap to a crawl (I could have walked faster). Since we were the only ones there, they said we could go until we were done. We had a good ride. This was a good adventure for the boys. Pretty soon big boy Kellan (23.3 pounds @ 6 mos) will enjoy these adventures too.