Moving north in Minnesota, our next spot for three nights was Mabel Lake Campground in the Chippewa National Forest. This campground has no hookups, but at a cost of only $7 per night (half price) with Barry’s Senior Park pass, it was a nice change from expensive and mosquito-ridden Crow Wing State Park. We hadn't boondocked (i..e., dry camped, which means camping without any hookups, electrical, water, or sewer) much, so this would be a good time to try out our systems and make sure we could get by without hookups for several days. The campground consists of one loop with 22 sites, and the exterior sites are nice and large. Some sites face the lake, but these were all taken when we arrived on a Thursday afternoon. We chose site 3 away from the lake but on the exterior. We were happy with this site as it provided plenty of privacy, with plenty of woods and understory all around. We got to set up our new screen room for the first time at this campground. What a wonderful addition to our camping gear this was! We should have gotten one long ago. Since our site was not right on the lake, we had a nice walk to the public access and day use area to get there. We walked down every night and let Paisley take a short dip, which she loved. It wasn't busy there at this time of day. We really enjoyed our stay at Mabel Lake, and there were many fewer mosquitoes than at Crow Wing. The only negative about this campground is that there is no dump station or trash facilities at all; you have to pack out all your trash (including doggie poop bags!)
Because of the trash issue, we wouldn’t want to stay much longer than the three nights we stayed. But for this length of time, it helped us gain confidence in our boondocking abilities. Sure, there are some inconveniences: making drip coffee with water heated on our propane camp stove instead of our electric coffeemaker, only charging my laptop once a day with our inverter on, not watching much if any TV, not using the microwave, and so forth. But our 12-volt power system running off the house batteries means that we have lights and running water inside the rig, and the fridge runs just fine on propane. And we can always run the generator occasionally if we really need some of the other AC appliances -- or to charge the house batteries during a longer stay. I think we see more boondocking in our future!
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When Barry noticed the city named Emily in Minnesota on the map, I didn't give it much thought at first. But when he said we could route ourselves right through it on the way to our next campground, I got more enthusiastic. I figured for a person named Emily, i.e. Me, there would be plenty of photo ops -- and there were! Arriving in this small city, population 827 as of 2013, we found the city park and parked Pearl. We then walked around from there. Being as small as it is, it was no problem to walk from one end of town to the other, stopping to take photos along the way. I've never claimed to be much of a saint, but hey, if the name fits! Turns out that I have another connection to this place other than simply its name. Although I didn't remember it as we walked through town, this rural telephone company, ECTC, installed a Nortel CS 1500 in 2008 to replace their legacy DCO (digital central office) equipment.. The CS 1500 was an IP call server that I worked on in my previous life as a telephony software developer. My memory of the specifics is a little vague, but I am almost positive that at least a couple of my co-workers back then actually traveled to the site in Emily to assist in the installation and integration of the CS 1500 into ECTC's network. Pretty cool connection, if you ask me! (Thanks Jim G. for the article that helped me remember about this!) Before leaving the tiny city that bore my name, I had to stop in at the gift shop (plus ice cream parlor!) and get a couple of souvenirs. We added the wooden magnet to our magnet board, and soon I am sure I will get a chance to wear the sweatshirt, as we're starting to have some chilly nights being up north with autumn approaching. I figured that there would be several cities named Emily around the US, but turns out, this one claims to be the only one. Knowing that, I was even happier that Barry noticed it on the map!
We took a couple of rides heading west on the Lake Wobegon Trail from our campground. This post documents the longest of our rides west. We had ridden the western portion of this trail (from Osakis to West Union) back in 2014 when staying in Alexandria, MN. Unfortunately, on that day, a storm prevented us from riding as much of the trail as we'd hoped. So this time, we hoped to ride the rest of it. Here's a map of the trail. Melrose, where we camped is close to the center point. To complete the western half of the trail, we rode from Melrose to West Union and back. For an excellent discussion of the Lake Wobegon Trail and the towns and cities along the way, check out this website. We pretty much had the trail to ourselves. Of course, the temperature was in the 90s on this afternoon, which will keep most sane folks indoors! :-) One of the interesting sites along this portion of the trail, just a couple of miles west of Melrose, is "Memoryville". It was quite interesting to see all the well-preserved transportation-related items. I read that there is a museum there but didn't see any signs of it being open when we passed by. Going through the small city of Sauk Centre, about eight miles west of Melrose, we stopped to take a photo of this tidy yard and flower garden. The owner was out on his riding mower cutting his extensive lawn, but I was much more interested in the parts that were not lawn. He obviously puts a lot of work into his yard. When we made it to the tiny town of West Union, we saw these cute barnyard animal sculptures we remembered from our ride in 2014, when this was as far as we got coming from the other direction. So this would be a perfect turn-around point for our current ride. I must have known we'd see these guys again, as I was dressed to match them. Moo moo oink oink! On our way back through Sauk Centre, boyhood home of Sinclair Lewis, we took a trail spur into downtown. We stopped at this pretty park and lake for a couple of photos. I particularly loved the charming center fountain here. And the flowers were lovely. We continued our ride on the well-maintained Sauk Centre Main Street. Perfect small-town Americana. We've been fortunate to drive and bicycle through so many appealing downtown areas on our journey through this part of the US. On the edge of downtown was this pretty Bed & Breakfast in an attractive historic house. We eventually made our way back to the newer part of town and stopped for a treat at DQ. Perfect for a hot day!
Stay tuned as we ride in the other direction east to St. Joseph in our next post. |
Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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