Labor Day Camping

I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day--and didn't get too rudely awakened by your alarm clock this morning to return to the real world! Getting up early after a holiday weekend is always tough for me, especially when we spend the holiday weekend camping and sleeping in until nine. At least there's only four days of work to make it through before another weekend comes!

Darrell and I have been camping on Labor Day for the past four years (we would have started sooner but I always had soccer games over Labor Day in college). It's a tradition he's done with his family since he was a kid, and although we can't (realistically) fly out to Georgia to camp with his whole extended family, we've decided to keep the tradition going in the Midwest. We've been to a different state park every year, and I have to say, I think this year at Roy Lake was my favorite. Check out this campsite:

Right on the lake, pretty secluded, and plenty of trees to hang our hammocks from. Wonderfully relaxing. Saturday was really windy though (and a little chilly!), so we decided that instead of lying around the campsite all day we go out and see some of the nearby landmarks, since neither of us had been in this area. We started with a visit to Sica Hollow State Park to hike the "famed" Trail of the Spirits.

The park, according to the website, was named "Sica", which means evil or bad, because of the mysterious happenings, particularly along the trail, like gurgling reddish bogs, which Native American lore, was the blood and flesh of their ancestors. Of course, you wouldn't know any of this going on the trail, because there is absolutely no information about the trail at the camp itself. We didn't even know anything about the route or distance of the trail it was so poorly marked. Subsequently, the whole thing was a little anti-climatic, but still had plenty of fantastic views that momentarily made us forget we were in South Dakota (and near the North Dakota border no less!)

We then drove to the Nicollet Tower outside of Sisseton, which promised a breath-taking aerial view of the prairie. And it didn't disappoint. Climbing up the tower in the high winds was a little nerve-wracking, but there was some solid construction that went into this tower and it didn't waver a bit.

The view from the top

Hi Darrell!

Our last stop of the day was Fort Sisseton, which was pretty cool to see, but also a little anti-climatic. The fort itself doesn't have much in terms of a historical significance, especially since it was only in use as a fort for around twenty years. However, it was really interesting to see how things may have looked back then and get a feel for what life was like for the soldiers and early settlers. 

Mock-up display of the kitchen area for the fort

We were ready for a relaxing evening by the fire after spending the afternoon driving and hiking around, and soon realized another bonus of our campsite: awesome sunsets.

I miss it already just by looking at the picture. It was seriously the perfect campsite, plus a great campground. There was a disc-golf course (which we played on Sunday), lots of paths for biking (score for remembering to bring ours!), canoe rentals (which we would have done if it hadn't been so chilly and windy), and a swimming beach (again, a little chilly for that). They also had a floating bridge leading to an island trail, but the trail was closed due to flooding, which was unfortunate.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, getting up for work this morning was a little rough, and now you can see why. I thought maybe it'd be easier since I certainly caught up on sleep this weekend, but apparently it only takes a few short days for my body to get used to sleeping in. Oh well; tomorrow's already Wednesday and the weekend will be here soon enough!

I can't resist sharing this parting shot--is my husband skilled with the camera or what?