Minnesota
We drove to Minnesota today to visit family. We are staying at an Anoka County regional park campground called Bunker Hills.
Early Morning
I set an alarm so we could get up and get going in the morning. We had about 250 miles to drive, and we are visiting my niece and her family. I was really excited to see them, and we were bringing the chicken for dinner.
We had only stayed one night in Acorn Valley, so there was no reason to dump our tanks.
Rest Stop
We stopped at the rest area slash welcome center in Dows, Iowa. The building was nice and the - um - whatever they are decorations look like decorated bullets. I guess they are just light posts. I am curious if the top “bullet” lights up at night, or if it’s just to light the sidewalk. There was a large, lovely park area with a bunch of uncovered and covered picnic tables. We felt very welcomed, although were were less than an hour from leaving Iowa, and we didn’t bring our picnic with us.
Unfortunately, we didn’t take time to explore very much and I now realized we missed railroad memorabilia. Drat!
Welcome to Minnesota
We did stop again, somewhere along the route. I’m finding that if I don’t take a photo, I have trouble remembering these minor details.
Minneapolis
I grabbed a couple front-window shots of the Minneapolis skyline and of Basilica of Saint Mary. We recalled having heard just in the past couple days a list of the best basilicas; we just don’t recall where we heard it. HAHA
Bunker Hills Campground
When we arrived at the park, we stopped at the kiosk and the ranger there told us to go to the campground visitor center to check in, so we made our way into the park. We got checked in and found out site easily. We had our concerns again about getting Starlink to work but, though there are a lot of trees, I found a site with enough view into the northwest sky to get a good signal. This campground has electrical and water hookups. We saw the dump station where we can stop on the way out.
Family Time
Once we got the camper settled in, we headed right back out to see Denise and family. When I first booked the campground, they lived just a few minutes away. However, they have since moved, and they live about 20 miles from this campground. Still, it’s not a bad drive. And the girls are still going to school here, so we will pick them up and take them home tomorrow afternoon.
Denise and Donny have done an amazing job working their way into a stunning home in a lovely, quiet neighborhood. I am so proud of how hard they work. And they are raising two funny, smart, delightful daughters. The girls made slime while Denise and Donny made dinner. Tony and I just watched it all.
Oh, but first Tony and I both needed help with things we had programmed on our phones and couldn’t remember how to turn the features off. We didn’t want to be the old people asking the kids for technology help, but here we are.
Bedtime
Everyone was tired and have to get up early, so we called it a day. The girls headed to bed and we headed back to camp.
We are actually running the fireplace tonight to take the chill out of the air. It is raining and cool. This should make for a nice sleeping situation. I’m going to go test that now.
