Pickles & Dimes

We took our last camping trip for the year to St. Croix Falls, the same campground where Jason proposed to me three years ago, and where we’ve been forced to leave early twice, once due to a tornado and once because we were tired of being rained on in our leaky tent.

This year, it was supposed to rain two out of the three days. My mind powers dictated otherwise, because it rained for only a few hours Friday afternoon, but it didn’t matter because instead of our tent, we got to use Jason’s parents’ popup camper.

When it started to rain, we were actually giddy, because that meant time to read books, take a nap with the puppy, relax with a few games of cribbage, and play plenty of Yahtzee.

Since we checked in at 3:00 p.m. Thursday, we had the campground practically to ourselves. Upon setting up our site, we discovered this:

Our garage mice had carefully nibbled through our bird food bag, spirited away the corn and stashed it in Jason’s camping chair. That’s a LOT of rodent food-hoarding activity. I may never go into our garage again.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much we needed this vacation. I was burned out from work, Jason was stressed, and we had both been looking forward to this trip for months. And it was perfect.

I am going to gaze longingly at that photo in the coming months, when I am contemplating the dreariness of Minnesota winters and wondering if I’ll ever see the sun or short sleeves again. Then I’ll remember this, our little campsite umbrellaed underneath sun-dappled red leaves. Ahhh.

Our only roadblock was that we couldn’t bring our own firewood (stupid emerald ash borers), so we bought wood at the park, where according to Jason, they marinated it in ice water (they had a shed that housed both the firewood and ice). Our wood was wet; the worst wood we’ve ever had. Just awful. The first night Jason spend 30 minutes trying to get a fire going, and after he gave up in disgust, it took another 15 minutes of me poking and prodding the ashes to get it started. And then a few nights later, after burning two Sunday papers and two fire starters, and spending an hour running from one side of the fire pit to the other, hunched over with my fire-poking stick like an arthritic cavewoman, I gave up and announced, “This wood sucks. I’m done.” As I walked away, one of the logs caught fire with a giant emphatic whoomph. Apparently, starting wet wood on fire requires it be fueled with large amounts of despair.

On Friday, it was supposed to rain, but we woke up to blue skies and took advantage by revisiting the spot where Jason proposed to me three years ago:

Still beautiful.

There was a clam shell practically right on the spot where Jason nervously got down on bended knee and told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

On Saturday, we hiked into St. Croix Falls. One of the trails looked like a forest filled with ancient Mayan ruins, littered with abandoned concrete trout ponds from an old fish hatchery. But then, salvation!

It wasn’t open yet, though. Bummer. The Mayan explorer in me could’ve gone for a Dilly Bar.

We visited the main street. Jason stuck his head in a lion’s mouth:

We went on another hike later, with Shorty leading the way, bounding playfully over rocks and tree roots and drinking fresh rainwater out of potholes. If we wouldn’t have been holding him on a tight leash, I’m convinced he would’ve jumped right off a cliff. He had no fear. He is the perfect camping/hiking dog.

He sits at benches like a person:

He plots our course of travel:

And he appreciates the view:

It was probably my favorite camping trip ever, full of perfect weather (it turned cold the day we returned home, with wind gusts of 45 mph), nice long coversations with Jason, plenty of relaxation, beautiful scenery and the soothing sounds of the river lullabying us to sleep every night.

Thanks for the memories, St. Croix Falls. See you next year.