First Camping Trip

We loaded up the family truckster and headed for the Mississippi headwaters in Itasca State Park.

We walked across the crystal clear river, only about knee deep at it's start.

Landen searched for frogs.

 This is on the bridge across the Mississippi.

The first swans we've really seen in the wild.

We went paddling on Lake Ozawindib. A clear little lake we had almost entirely to ourselves, our neighbors from the campground were the only others on the lake.

Mackenna had a good time fishing for lily pads.

Landen had a good time fishing for Sun fish, there were lots of them.

We stopped at a sandy point and the kids had a snack, swam, and fished from shore.

There was plenty of bug life around for Landen and Mackenna to discover. Landen found a wide variety of caterpillar.

We roasted hot dogs, marshmallows, and sandwiches on the fire. Landen loved helping to build the fire and wanted one at all hours of the day. Unfortunately it was around 100 degrees the whole time so a fire was the last thing on my mind.

We hiked to see the largest red and white pine trees.

We had water fights and went to the beach to keep cool.

We were about to go fishing again when a storm blew in on Monday evening around 6:00. Mackenna decided she'd practice driving instead of getting wet outside with the boys.

We headed back to the campground to make sure we had the tent all zipped up. As soon as we turned down the road to the campground the sky turned green and the trees started whipping around. We got part way down the road when we encountered others stopped by down trees. Brant decided to backup to find a place with fewer large trees and as we were backing up we were stopped abruptly by a large tree. I don't think I'll soon forget the sound of the crushing metal or the kids screaming.

A brave women named Tina came running back to the car to see if we were ok and we all joined her and her family in their vehicle. She bandaged Landen's scraped elbow and her boys kept Landen entertained with their stories of injuries past (scraped knees and cut fingers). We got some trees pulled off the road and were able to make it back to the campground. Most of it was not passable, trees were down every where. It took emergency crews about 1.5-2 hours to get to the campground. They checked out Landen because he hit his head on something in the accident, but gave him the all clear. At the Millers campsite which made it through the storm untouched, their oldest son took good care of Mackenna, her shoes were left in the car so he got her a pair of his to hobble around in, he got her a dry towel to wrap up in, he carried her around, it was adorable. The Gapinski's camper also made it through the storm with no damage and they gave Mackenna place to lay down (at this point it was already 9:00pm) and Landen their Kindle to play Angry Birds on. We were just trying to figure out where we were going to stay for the night.

The tow truck driver John came to the rescue, he called his friend who owned the only motel in Bagley and asked him if he'd come back in to the motel (they had already closed for the evening) to get us a room. He said he would so we all piled into the tow truck, Mackenna thought she was in a parade for a minute, she was waving out the window as we left the campground. We arrived in Bagley around 11:00pm, just happy not to be in the tent.

In the morning we saw just how lucky we were to have both the kids with us, a miracle if you ask us. The photo below is the back seat of the car, the cross bar of the roof is squishing the headrest of Mackenna's car seat.

When Brant and Al went back to the park the next day they found the offending tree. Al gives you some perspective on it's size.

Thanks to everyone who helped us; Al and Elaine for coming down to rescue us,  The Miller's and Gapinski's, John our tow truck driver, the sheriff and EMS, and many others who offered assistance.