Lake Bemidji State Park - An "Exciting" Experience!

This post is another installment in the series documenting our trip to the states of Minnesota and Michigan back in the summer of 2015.  Our daughter, Kyra, was 16 and out of school on summer vacation, so she joined us on our two week whirlwind tour of the M&M states.

One of the disadvantages of documenting a trip long after it was taken is the inability to remember why certain decisions were made.  As I look back on our trip to Minnesota and Michigan, I find myself wondering why we camped at Lake Bemidji State Park in Minnesota instead of Itasca State Park.  You might recall that I mentioned in a previous post that this entire trip was based upon a desire to visit the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and those headwaters are located within Itasca.  Hmm.  I’m thinking that we might have stayed at Lake Bemidji to better position ourselves for our day trip to Voyageurs National Park which was a two hour drive north from Lake Bemidji.  It would have been close to three hours from Lake Itasca, hence my deduction.  In any event, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Lake Bemidji except for one teeny tiny thing.

With our visit to the “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul in our rear view mirror, we rolled along through the Minnesota countryside on our way to Lake Bemidji State Park.  As we got closer to the Park, we were casting anxious glances at the cloud formations around us.  In the area of the northeast in which we live summer thunderstorms are common but not often severe, and tornadoes are a rare occurrence.  The clouds moving quickly across the Minnesota sky appeared more sinister than their east coast counterparts, and we were happy to reach the campground at Lake Bemidji without running into nasty weather.

This view out the windshield made us more than a little nervous.

It was sometime during the night that the sound of a car horn woke me up.  When I realized that the sound of the horn was consistently three beeps then a break followed by another three beeps, I knew something was wrong.  I woke Alan and told him something was up.  He groggily replied that it was probably just some jerk that had a few too many beers.  No way, I insisted, and just about pushed him out the door to find out what was going on.  (I’m pretty sure that somewhere during our marriage vows Alan promised to love and honor me and slay all midnight dragons.  In case you’re wondering, I promised to love and honor him and set up the coffee pot every night.)

When Alan managed to track down and stop the guy blowing the horn, he found out that a severe storm was approaching, and the campground staff was concerned about downed trees falling on top of campers.  Everyone was being asked to take shelter in the (concrete block) restrooms as soon as possible.  YIKES!  In nearly 40 years of camping, we had never been in a situation like that before.  We woke Kyra up, dressed quickly and hightailed it over to the restroom building.  (How anyone could sleep through the blaring car horn is beyond me but I think both Alan and Kyra would have done it had I not been there.)

I honestly don’t remember if we ended up in the men’s room or the ladies’ room but I have to say that it was rather surreal to see such a motley crew in the bathroom together.  It felt sort of like a postapocalyptic cocktail party with men, women, kids and dogs present and everyone (except the dogs) trying their best to make small talk.  I can assure you that none of us was dressed to the nines - and nobody cared.

We huddled in the restroom for about 30 minutes while one of the men tracked the storm on radar via a website he had pulled up on his smartphone.  As the storm moved east and the winds and rain slowed, campers started poking their heads out of the restroom and eventually we all headed out in the still wet weather to return to our rigs.  Fortunately, the storm didn’t generate a tornado and the winds that whipped through the campground weren’t strong enough to do any damage.  We were extremely lucky that night but realizing something disastrous could have happened was a sobering thought.

In retrospect, I’d have to say that the most frightening moment for me was when I knew in my heart that something was wrong, but we had no idea yet what it might be.  After that we had a plan and, frankly, the situation and our safety was in fate’s hands.  We couldn’t outrun a storm that we couldn’t see in an area we didn’t know, so hunkering down in the safest place possible was our best option.  Thank heaven the experience turned into nothing more than the fright it was accompanied by some wet clothes.

Luckily, the next day dawned bright and sunny.  Our campsite was what I’ve come to think of as fairly typical for a State Park and we felt quite at home among the tall trees.  We enjoyed exploring Lake Bemidji State Park prior to our excursion to the headwaters of the Mississippi.  The Park had a nicely sized beach, a fishing pier and a sweet little docking area for boats.

We enjoyed a three night stay at Lake Bemidji (only one of which was spent in the restroom) and it proved to be an excellent base camp for our excursions to Itasca State Park and Voyageurs National Park.  Despite the terrifying weather event, I’d readily camp at Lake Bemidji again should we find ourselves in that area of Minnesota.  I’m very fond of the restrooms.

Guess what!  Alan and I just returned home following a 9,700 mile camping expedition of nearly six weeks.  Where did we go?  I’ll give you a few hints, but you’ll have to wait for the next post for the answer.  Our main focus was a visit to a state with AMAZING bike trails where camped on a world renowned fly fishing stream and in a couple of impressive campgrounds owned by a power company.  We also squeezed in a service visit to the factory where our travel trailer was built and a couple of visits with friends, outran the first big snow storm of the season and explored a major city in the Midwest that we had never visited.  Despite the 9,000+ miles, we only colored in one additional state on the map in the right hand column of the blog (it’s one of the yellow ones), but that two night stay allowed us to check off yet another National Park on our list.    A summary of that adventure filled trip will be coming up in the next post!