Camping Chronicles I: Blue Mounds State Park

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Since I had no major trips planned this summer, I decided that it was time to explore a bit of the state around me - I have lived here five years now and done very little local exploring - and time to get back to camping. When my brothers and I were little, my family went camping every summer, and I have found that I missed that - the early mornings, the fires at night, the time in nature. Because I spend most of my free time writing, I am often inside, hunched over a computer or notebook, and I wanted to get away from screens and back into nature.

My first excursion was to Blue Mounds State Park near Luverne, MN. Though the park is experiencing water issues right now (you cannot drink the water, so bring your own in), it is a beautiful park. The trails take you through tall grass prairie, which once used to cover much of this area of the state. If you stand just right, where you can't see the signs of modernized Minnesota, the prairie seems to go on forever, and you feel you can see all the way to Iowa, all the way to South Dakota.

Another unique feature of the park is the bison. Blue Mounds has a heard of around 70 bison. These bison are part of the 1% of North American bison that do not have any cattle influence in their DNA. These are the bison that once roamed the prairies in their thousands. Fridays-Sundays, you can take a tour of the bison range and prairie, which I highly recommend. Our guide, Amber, was great - fun and knowledgable, which for me are the two things every guide should be. There is, of course, no guarantee that you will be able to get close to the bison (it reminded me a bit of whale watching - you know that they're out there but you don't know how close you'll get) but either way the tour is more than worth it. The bison can also be viewed from some of the trails where you will also see/hear many birds, deer, and rabbits.

It was a great getaway for a couple days and I'm looking forward to the next one: Sakatah Lake State Park.

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