VACATION – Sunshiny Saturday

Brrrr woke up to 41 degrees outside (that is in F – not C - for our Cannucki friends)   but we were cozy warm in the motorhome with the heater going.  Sunshine streaming in the windows ------  looks like it’s gonna be beeeuuuuutttifffuuulll day!

 

Steveio cooked some of his wonderful thin sliced american fried potatoes and some slices of turkey ham for breakfast, what a treat!  He also fried up some of his leftover red potatoes too.  We ate it so fast, I didn’t have time to take a photo of it!

 


We took a nice walk around the park, to see all the new rigs and tents that came in last night… every site in the park is taken, all 70 of them.   It’s very quiet and peaceful this morning.  Got the coffee perked and the steaming mug here as I write this.   There are also five little cabins that can be rented too… so we snapped a pic of one.  How cute is that?

 

I noticed the wild ferns here are different from those in our part of Wisconsin.

Sam and Donna asked if we brought the dogs, of course!   Here is Duke, enjoying his walk.

Here is Steveio checking out the fish cleaning shack… he doesn’t have a Minnesota license, so he passed on the fishing.  But watching the other guys clean fish was OK too.



After our walk, we decided to just sit around and not do much of nuttin! …. he put out the chairs and we sat in the sunshine and talked about our trip and even dozed off a bit. 

That is how quiet it has been in our campground.   Our solar panels were charging up at full blast, because it was pure sunshine and no clouds for the morning, and in no time we were topped off at 100%.  And here is Duchess (Dumb Ducky)  taking in the rays.



We were talking with a fellow camper, who said there is no dump station in this park, but if you want to dump, you have to drive over to Father Hennipin State Park on the SE corner of the big lake. We decided to check it out to see if we should drive that way when we leave on Monday afternoon (that road was ruff coming here) or go another way.

So we hopped in the Tracker after lunch and drove on over.  WHEW!!!  Talk about packed in like sardines… it was tents and campers and screen houses and kids and toys all over.  In some areas you could not tell where one campsite ended and another started!  The turn into the dump station area was tight, as we were warned.  It had been developed for short travel trailers, not 40 foot long motorhomes towing a car behind!  We decided to forgo this idea and dump somewhere else.  Our tanks are doing fine and we can manage for now. 

On the way back to our quiet, well-spaced. and well thought-out campground, we decided to stop at a small convenience store to pick up three things:

1. a dozen eggs because I wanted to bake some brownies and we don’t buy eggs often due to Steve’s watching his cholesterol
2. french vanilla coffee creamer because I was getting low
3. a half gallon of vanilla ice cream to go with our raspberries from yesterday’s fruit stand.

You might wonder why I am spelling out my shopping list.  Well, being there are no big grocery stores for about 30 miles, we had no choice but to stop at these small touristy expensive ones.  There are NO prices on the shelves.  If you want it, you gotta pay it, I guess.   Sooooo those three things, without knowing how much they cost, were rung up for me.  TWELVE DOLLARS!!!!   That averages out to $4 per item?  WHEW!   Ouch.  And the creamer was only a very small bottle of the *other kind* … I like COFFEEMATE French Vanilla!

On the way back to our campground, we drove past a few interesting things… This is a “resort” with park model mobile homes, and each has a it’s own dock and a place to park the pontoon boats.  There were many of these type *resorts* along this end of the big Mille Lacs Lake.   Evidently the developers of these place dig big channels around in loops and make a farm field into a “resort”— and make 100’s of lots.  Charging those vacation folks from Minneapolis and St. Paul some big bucks to set up a mobile home getaway!  More sardines.

The other thing I found that was hilarious is that they call ice shacks “wheelhouses”   and store them in big fields along the lakeshore.  Being in Minney-soh-tah means ice fishing in the winter, of course, as that state winter pastime.  And having your shack--- er wheelhouse--  located close by the lake is a plus.  So you rent a space in someone’s field for it to sit all summer instead of wheeling it all of the way home?  Either that, or it’s someone’s Cheap Resort?   LOL

We got back to the campgrounds and Steveio lit a fire to cook supper… we had cheeseburgers on the fire, a pan of spicey/cheezy rice and some wonderful wine we had bought when camping with Sharon and Fred up in Lakewood area.

It was called Northern Ice, from Woodland Trails windey in Lakewood, WI

(Kinda looks like a magazine ad, huh?)

After supper we just HAD to have those fresh raspberries!  Over that expensive ice cream--



I have run outta dishcloths for washing dishes, so I am quick knitting up another one.  It’s either that, or stop somewhere to do laundry.  I got halfway done by dinnertime, and kept knitting long after and it might be done for breakfast dishes on Sunday?



Once, I taught my sister to knit these dishcloths.  But she was getting confused as it was getting dark and she also imbibed on a few beers… her dish cloth came out with five sides!   It has finally bitten the dust after all these years, so she needed a new one in time for her vacation that starts next week.  I whipped her one up this past week and put it in the mail to her.  Yes, you guessed it, it also has FIVE SIDES so she can feel at peace with it, being similar to hers.  LOL

We were sitting out around the fire till dark, it got quite cold, and temps were going to dip into the low 40’s here, perhaps even into the 30’s. 

Autumn IS on it’s way… I can smell it in the air!