Long Lake Park, Bagley, MN - Trip 6

Saturday, June 16th to Tuesday, June 19th.
Long Lake Park Campground
Bagley, MN


OK! OK! Sorry we’re so late getting the trip posted. Coming home on Tuesday, then going to work for the rest of the week, plus Mike’s pancake breakfast fundraising on Saturday took up all the spare time to get this done, but here it is!


Saturday

Had a nice drive up to the campground. We stopped at Sauk Centre for lunch and made it to Park Rapids around 4 PM. We stopped in for a surprise visit with Nancy Terhark, our neighbor from Maple Grove. She has a house in Park Rapids now. After that, it was a quick trip to the grocery and liquor stores and back on the road to the campground.

The park is not too bad. The site was a little tight getting into but we made it. We got the camp setup and had our first visitor, a rabbit, right in the middle of our camp site.

Mike got the chicken marinating and we took a walk through the park to check it out. As usual for the weekend, it’s packed. Back at the campsite we built a campfire, grilled up the chicken and had dinner outside on the picnic table.

The weather was warm and humid so it was nice to have the air conditioner on the camper. (Yes, I know, really roughing it, right??) We learned real quickly that you do not run anything else when you have the AC going. We had the water heater on electric and when it kicked in it tripped the inside breaker for the whole camper. It took a few minutes to figure it out, but once we did, and switched the water heater over to propane, we didn’t have any problems.

Mike got to use my birthday present today. Tom bought him 2 six ton hydraulic jacks for the camper for his birthday. Nothing says “I love you” like a hydraulic jack! Mike had shown Tom an article on leveling your camper using these jacks on each side of the axel and said we’d have to put them on our shopping list. Not only does it stabilize the camper it allows you to level it. Good thing too as the campsite is all grass, not level, and a little muddy. Looks like our anniversary gift to each other is going to be a big patio rug for the camper!!


Sunday
It rained most of the night. We even had the weather radio go off with a sever thunderstorm warning, but it was for the next county over, not us. However, it’s nice to know that the radio works. This was the first time it’s gone off.

Mike surprised Tom with fresh baked cinnamon streusel for breakfast. (Note to self: the oven bakes hot so watch the timer.) I burned the bottom of the cake. Other than that, it was good! Oh, did I mention that Tom slept in until 11 AM??

Once sleeping beauty got up and showered, we headed in towards Park Rapids to Christmas Town. We checked out the store, bought Ma (Mary) a t-shirt, and Mike bought one too. They have miniature golf, batting cage, a train ride, water balloon slingshots, and go karts. For fun, we bought tickets for the go karts and had ourselves a mini-Indy 500. Who won? Tom!

On the way back to the camper, we swung through Itasca State Park to check out the campsite we’ll be at in two weeks. Looks like another tight fit, but we should be able to make it. We’re getting better at backing so it should be OK. We toured the whole campground and found some even better sites, so we’ve made note of them for next year. Site 70 looks really great. It has a lake view and is real easy to back into.

Back at base camp we started getting ready for Nancy to join us for dinner. We had invited her up yesterday for wild rice brats on the grill. She called just as she was heading out and said that the weather was looking kind of bad. Sure enough, there was a tornado watch out for the area. We told her to skip tonight. It wouldn’t be much fun to be huddled in the shower room (the storm shelter) at the campground if the weather went bad.

After dinner we took a walk down to the beach and stood on the fishing dock and watched three eagles soar over the lake. Then we went for a bike ride along the lake and called it a night.

Back at the camper Tom graded some papers and Mike got started on the writing this for the blog. The weather started to get bad and the weather alarm radio started going off again. We had some good storms over the night and lost power to the entire camp. Unfortunately this also meant no water as the camp is on a well. Fortunately, we had a full tank of fresh water and a fully charged battery, so we were ok.

Monday
No power this morning. Hmmmmmm….. Maybe we’ll need to start packing the generator with us every trip.

Today is dive day for Mike. After breakfast Mike started getting his gear ready and we headed down to the lake.

First dive was just to get a sense of the lake and the terrain. After an hour rest, back down again to take some pictures and some video. Mike was using Dick’s underwater video enclosure and it’s a struggle. The case does not have enough weight in is so it will not sink. Plus the push rod is too tight to the camera and it keeps getting turned off and on, resulting in a lot of missed footage.

The power did come on at 1:30 or so in the afternoon

Tuesday
Had another storm overnight and woke up to no power again. No power means no water which means we cannot dump our tanks at the campsite. We’ll have to find a site on the way home. We packed up and headed out.

On the way we stopped in Saul Centre at the Sinclair Lewis Campground and used their dump station. Turns out this campground is the same campground that Tom camped at as a child. We’re going to make plans for a trip to the campground. Maybe even bring Tom’s Mom with for the trip.

Next trip, Itasca State Park for four days.
Until then….