After a year of break, we are back to camping with a teardrop trailer. A lot has happened since last time, John was able to convince me that owning is financially reasonable and we finally got the trailer delivered! We decided to take a trial run at Nana and Pa’s backyard over the fourth of July weekend. Oh, I delivered something small in May called Ruth. You will see soon.
The trip was supposed to be short. But with kids, you can never expect anything to be easy. We forgot many things while packing, accidents happened, many stops were necessary. I remember texting the family chat, “Amelia’s car seat is all wet and soaked through, what do I do?”. The advice I got, “Put a towel down, and keep driving.” Words of the wise and experienced. Oh yeah, with two kids, RIP back seat space.
When we finally got there, my Sister-In-Law and the kids tried to take a selfie in the trailer, but Amelia was too good for the photo. Here is what I got. The view above us is not bad either.
Amelia had a lot of fun the first night. She watered the garden with Nana which turned into a water fight with her chasing everyone with the hose. It’s well water which is ice cold. When it got dark, we all went for a walk and caught fireflies. It’s my first time catching fireflies and I really enjoyed it. We put them in a Parmesan cheese bottle with netting on top and put them in the trailer.
The first night is always hard. Amelia spent a long time playing in the new space when we were supposed to sleep. She had a lot of fun crawling and jumping over mom and dad. And then she got upset since she was too tired to sleep. Ruth did the opposite and did not make a noise. We wondered if she was still alive. We didn’t have curtains yet, no one got to sleep in. Amelia asked to turn the light off when the sun came up. Well hon, mommy can’t turn the sun off. It’s called the sunshine. The next day we all needed a long nap.
This is the weekend to get all of our supplies. We tallied the list of what’s necessary and made a Target run. We debated on what types of storage to get and the color of kitchen utensils. I loved it, it was like designing our own space all over again. Of course, I had to go back to the store a couple times to get everything. It’s still a working progress. We also brought a box of blue apron to cook in the galley kitchen. After we got the propane tank filled, we cooked our first meal. Thanks to family who entertained our kids, we got to make the meal ourselves. This almost feel like a date night. Curry scallops with rice and snow peas. YUM!
After dinner, we went for a boat ride to watch the fireworks on the lake. Amelia was not scared at all, she kept saying “BOOM! BOOM!” So many new things for her, but best of all is family time spent together. Kiddy pool time outside with bath toys, Amelia chasing after bugs, us swimming in the lake, Nana teaching Amelia to sew, meal time around the picnic table, Amelia finding tallest person to ride on, and ice cream at Ramone’s.
Day trips are a great way to appreciate the wonders of what’s close to home.
The Plan
Whitewater State Park is a park that we’ve heard a lot about from friends and co-workers as a place we should try to camp. Unfortunately, it’s campgrounds are booked solid through October unless you want to do some mid-week camping (which is actually the way to do it if you want peace and quiet). The fact that it’s popular isn’t a surprise, it’s less than two hour drive from Minneapolis-St Paul making it a do-able day-trip.
With the pandemic in full swing, the amount of things we’ve done with friends can probably be counted on two hands, possibly one. We called up our long lost next-door neighbors that love the outdoors and deemed hiking a relatively safe way for us to hang out at long last.
I’m a pretty big fan of All Trails as a way to find cool places to hike, by checking out other people’s photos, distance, difficultly and elevation change. We thought following sounded nice…
Whitewater State Park Dakota Trails Loop is a 3.9 mile moderately trafficked loop trail located near Altura, Minnesota that features a lake and is rated as moderate. The trail offers a number of activity options and is best used from May until October. Dogs are also able to use this trail but must be kept on leash.
The plan was:
Eat breakfast & pack a lunch
Leave at 8:30am
Arrive around 10:30am
Hike to a cool location & eat
Finish the hike in 3hrs
The Actual
Slight change of course…
As you can see things don’t always go as planned… The morning started off just fine with packing at 7:30am but some how time just flies and by the time we hit the road it was almost 9am. Driving proved a bit more challenging with a major highway closure in the metro but more interestingly was the road closure in the middle of no-where Minnesota… No worries we thought until we realized Google was not rerouting… turns out no-where Minnesota has no service! Being a child of the midwest, we were able to circumvent the closure by relying on the country roads being roughly laid out in a grid. The next road however was gravel, not something I was hoping to take my VW GTI on!
With the rest of the drive being uneventful we arrived at about 11am. We were lucky that we immediately met up with our friends at the Visitor Center. No service would have made that hard, had we not. Speaking of no cell service, that means no maps on your phone. All Trails does have a subscription plan that allows you to download maps for offline use but these days I feel like I’m drowning in subscription fees and forewent the $2.50/mo fee by being clever and having the map loaded already in my phone. We grabbed a few paper maps from the ranger to be safe, it’s never a good idea to fully rely on electronics in the wilderness.
With that we were ready to hit the trail! Then we saw this:
Difficult… 3.5hrs (not the 2hrs we had already padded to 3). Hmm…
Well up we go, immediately greeted with the hardest part of the trail, a stairway straight up to Coyote Point (this posts featured image) and several beautiful bluffs to take in.
Hitting the point left us hungry so we sat down for some lunch. Ours was an eclectic offering of things we had in the kitchen, hard boiled eggs, rambutans, blue berries, cucumber, turkey and string cheese. Not one of our finest culinary moments but it hit the spot.
The hike continued after our break but man they weren’t kidding when they said difficult. The trail was very rocky, rooty and steep in places. We really wished we would have brought our hiking poles to keep us stable.
Our hike took an unexpected detour or “bonus trip” as we call them when there was a trail that split off to the right. Xiao argued, that according to our paper map the next split we should take it. Looking at my cached All Trails map I wasn’t so sure (GPS still works without cell service). We decided to take a gamble on it and headed into the woods where the trail got narrower and narrower. I check my phone again and All Trails has crashed, I lost my cached map! But did we stop? Nope! How about when there were fallen logs across the trail? No again! How about branches so low you had to push them out of the way? Nah! We continued for our predetermined 10min commitment of trying the trail out. Within 5min we ran into some deer hunting stands… In a park… Hmm this doesn’t seem like the right way… As you can see on the image above we ‘detoured’ our way out of the park. Turning around we made it back to the main trail and continued on until we actually found the right turn we were looking for.
By the time we arrived at Whitewater River it was already 2pm. Clearly our plan of doing the whole Dakota Trail wasn’t going to work, so we enjoyed some time by the stepping stone bridge and planned an alternate route.
This new plan had us walking eye level with the river and gave us the awesome perspective of the bluffs and ridges we just hiked.
River was full of trout, I’d definitely get a license and bring a pole next time I’m in the area.
We wrapped up the hike through a prairie in autumn bloom while Amelia took some time to stretch her legs after being carted around all day in a backpack.
With our hike done we stopped in Rochester, MN for some much deserved Ice Cream at Flap Doodles. Not too far out of the way if you are headed to the metro and well worth it for the awesome ice cream they have!
Our second teardrop rental experience had us more prepared, expectations higher and much more volatile weather to deal with.
Choosing the trailer…
Continuing our exploration of teardrop trailers for a quick and easy way to camp with a baby we decided to go with outdoorsy.com since they had a ton more teardrops listed nearby. We decided to rent the Mini-Sota Custom Teardrop Camper from Craig based on its awesome galley and stargazer window.
Willow River hit all four of these with a handful camping sites open, ability for us to negotiate a fee for delivery of the trailer, a 40min drive from home and fantastic hiking to a waterfall.
With campsites filling up fast and the teardrop camper only available Thursday-Saturday we had to jump on it. This meant we had to scramble to figure out care for our dog, Jayda, for the weekend because sadly, although understandably, most rentals don’t allow pets. Luckily we have family nearby that agreed to take Jayda for the weekend, saving us some stress.
With Friday’s in Minnesota being pretty slow at both our work we were able to take the day off with minimal fuss. THE TRIP WAS ON!
Prepping to go
Disaster strikes! Six days before we are supposed to head out on our trip Amelia takes a fever. By Tuesday morning, two days before our trip, we end up having a video call with a pediatrician who tells us we can either take Amelia into a respiratory clinic to get her ears checked, wait it out or try antibiotics. With us being 99.99% sure Amelia has an ear infection we went with option 3, the antibiotics. Luckily the antibiotics did their work and by Wednesday morning Amelia was 90% back to normal. The trip is still a go!
The day before we leave I fill up our cooler with ice to cool the cooler itself down and get all our groceries. For this trip we wanted to try something clever and fun. We bought several meal kits from Lunds and Byerlys That way:
We had something interesting to cook
We had all the ingredients we needed
In addition to the meal kits, I bought stuff to make overnight oats for the first time, assuming they’d be the perfect low effort, baby friendly breakfast food. I rounded out the food with trail mix, bananas and yogurt. Lastly, it’s not camping if you don’t make s’mores! I made sure to pick up enough components to keep us happy.
I wrapped up Wednesday night by rounding up all the camping widgets and gizmos that are specific to camping, headlamps, camp chairs, water jugs, bug spray, s’more sticks, etc.
But wait! Disaster strikes again! Thursday morning, the day of us leaving Amelia has a rash all over her. A quick video call with another pediatrician tells us that Amelia is likely allergic to Amoxicillin, something that effects 5% of kids (lucky her). Talking with the doctor, he affirms that it will still be safe to travel and to stop administering the meds.
By 4:45pm we were on our way to camp! Clearly, our Forester isn’t going to cut it if we want to bring Jayda or if Amelia ever gets a sibling!
Campsite arrival
We arrive at our campsite, something I always take pride in picking out. My key constraints: outer ring so we aren’t back to back with other campers, close but not too close to the stinky bathrooms and as private as possible.
After unpacking the car a bit, Craig arrives with the trailer and shows us the in’s and out’s of his custom made trailer. This teardrop was a steal for everything we got included in it. Full set of dishes, cooler with ice packs, bottle of wine and coffee for the french press! Amazing! Since the trailer is custom built we could see a ton of detail went into making it perfect, from hooks and shelves to bins for your shoes and a pass-through to the galley!
Knowing that we’d be on the road during dinner time, we picked up some Aloha Poke bowls to go and a teriyaki bowl for Amelia. Yum!
That night there was rain in the forecast, so we battened down the hatches and called it a night pretty early… Or so we thought! With the stargazer window we were wowed with the night sky above our heads and Amelia was giddy with the prospect of another night in a family sized crib! It took us a while to get Amelia to settle down. All was smooth sailing until 3am when a thunderstorm hit us. We quickly closed the windows and top fan hatch not realizing the fan was holding several mosquitos against the screen with suction. A hour of lost sleep to buzzing skeeters later and we were back to dream land.
Day 2
We were lucky that Amelia was still recovering from being ill and she slept in a bit, giving us time to catch up on missed sleep from the previous night. I ventured out, made some coffee and mixed some Nutella and bananas into our experimental overnight oats to find out they are a huge success with the whole family!
We decide to quickly head out for our main hike from campsite 200 to see the falls before the weekend visitors start to arrive.
While the woods are a bit overwhelmed with invasive buckthorn the falls are amazing!
We headed back to camp to make lunch; Adobo Pork Street Tacos using the spacious galley, while Amelia jingles around with bells on her legs, watching us cook.
With the afternoon sunny, we setup the rest of camp including our newest camping gear… A rug for Amelia to play on! This allows us a nice dry place to put Amelia’s toys, a spot for us lay down with her to play and its easy to clean if it gets muddy, just hose it off since its polypropylene.
After a well deserved nap, Amelia’s auntie arrived in time for Luau Pork dinner. But as we were sitting down to eat, all was not well. Auntie, wanting to know if she should put a her rain fly on her tent asked if it would rain that night so I dutifully checked the weather. YES! It will rain tonight, in fact, right now! A popcorn shower about 10mi in diameter had sprung up. We scrambled to throw the rainfly on, move our food under the teardrops’ galley hood as the screams from others campers and hikers could be heard. It POURED, but only for 10 minutes, enough that our guac we left on the table was ruined. RIP Guac.
With all the excitement of the rain, Amelia was wiped and quickly fell asleep in the trailer while we coaxed a fire going to make s’mores and drink a bottle of wine together. Unfortunately, since it rained, once we all got to bed we were in for a very cold and clammy night. I’m not sure what we could have done to make sleeping more pleasant but Amelia waking up and trying to kick off the blankets and getting frustrated was not ideal.
Day 3 and pack up!
Our morning started off pretty slow since it had cooled off to mid fifties overnight, making it hard to leave the cosy teardrop to make breakfast. We finally got going and took everyone for a long hike along Willow River which was beautiful if not a little crowded due to all the weekend day visitors. We came back for a late lunch where we made Chicken Verde Tacos and started to pack up. Craig arrived on time to pick up the trailer and we were on our way home. Another Rogue Hogue camping trip in the bag!
Rogue Hogues 