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| Campsite A14 offers a perfect view of the river below. |
I’ve never been to a campground
when no one else was camping, but that was where we found ourselves when we
went for a mid-week camp-out at Minneopa State Park.
The solitude was wonderful — like
owning your own sprawling wooded estate.
Cranking up the pop-up camper
during the first trip of the year is exciting. It’s also the time you remember
everything you took out of the camper last fall and forgot to replace: Dish
soap, lighter fluid, bowls, forks and a coffee pot.
All of which are minor
annoyances, except for the coffee pot — that’s like forgetting the batteries
for your implantable cardiac defibrillator. But there is always cowboy coffee,
brewed in a pan, slowly filtered through paper towels into plastic cups (we
forgot the coffee cups, too).
I’ve always loved a pop-up camper
— compact, more luxury than a tent but with
canvas sides that keep you closer to the outdoors than the walls of a
camper do.
It lets you experience all the
night sounds, while buried under the quilts — and there were plenty of sounds high on the
bluff overlooking the Minnesota River: Geese and turkey settling in for the night, the
chilling calls of a barred owl, trees whipping in the wind and the rumble of a
Union Pacific train rolling by.
A perfect first outing.
