Camping season popping up

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.