Gull Lake Corp of Engineer Park (Brainerd, MN) July 28 - August 2, 2014

We decided to spend a week relaxing in Minnesota this year for our summer vacation. We headed up to the Gull Lake Corp of Engineer park. The sites are large and very long and the park is quiet yet close to everything.

The town of Nisswa is a cute little tourist area with shops, restaurants and one of the bike trail stops for the Paul Bunyan trail.

There is a ton of golf around if you are into that. We golfed Madden's which has 4 courses and they are all very nice.

The Gull Lake COE provides rakes and shovels - this is really nice in the fall when there are alot of leaves around.

 Our site

The road thru the park

 The dam where we always saw someone fishing and they were catching fish!

 The Gull River which runs into Gull Lake.

The park in the campground

One of the biffies - they keep everything really clean.

Swimming area

Paul Bunyan trail just outside Pine River (we biked from Nisswa to Pine River)

Bike trail through Kavanaugh's resort

 Ernie's on Gull Lake - great view and good food

Nisswa - great place to bike to or start your ride

Madden's Golf course

Bike trail in Pequot Lakes

More of the Paul Bunyan trail

Crow Wing State Park (we biked from the Brainerd, MN trail head to Crow Wing - 36 miles round trip)

Bike trail goes over the Mississippi river

Itasca State Park, July 17-20, 2014

Itasca State Park has 2 campgrounds. Pine Ridge is the newer campground. The sites are a bit more open in the front part and very private and wooded in the back. The back sites don't have electricity. The bathrooms in this park are newer and very nice offering private bathroom facilities and single room showers. The other campground is Bear Paw. They have a few housekeeping cabins, the bathrooms are log cabin and you can see the lake from some of the sites. We stayed at Bear Paw this trip and really liked this campground. We were with my family so we had 3 sites and one of the cabins. The sites aren't huge in this park, but they are nice and our site was very private. 

Itasca story at the Museum near the beach/picnic area.

 Museum

 Amphitheater near the museum

 Path to the headwaters from the picnic grounds

Campground road in Bear Paw campground

One of the bathrooms in Bear Paw campground

View of the lake from Bear Paw campground

View of the campground in Bear Paw

Wilderness Trail road/bike path (total circle of bike trails = 17 miles)

Part of the scavenger hunt we did

Path from the headwaters store to the headwaters

Our campsite

 Headwaters

Father Hennepin State Park, July 2-6, 2014

Father Hennepin State Park added some electric sites to their upper (Maple Grove) campground a couple of years ago so we thought we'd go back there and check one out. The sites in the lower campground are pretty hilly and close together and the upper campground sites are more private. However, they are still pretty hilly and you don't have a huge amount of room for a screen house, tent or just moving around on some. The sites are sort of strangely laid out. We had site 84 and it worked for us, but we felt a bit cramped.

Father Hennepin is a big draw for people with boats and who fish as it's right on Lake Mille Lacs. The beach is really nice and well maintained and they have about a mile of paved walking/hiking/biking trails within the park. They also have another 2-3 miles of hiking trails that are very well maintained. In addition there is the Soo Line bike trail just outside the park and we biked 3 miles to the city of Wahkon.

Father Hennepin is just outside the town of Isle and you can walk or bike to town. The town is very small (only 700 people), but they do have a nice grocery store, bakery and a couple little shops.

One of the docks from the campground on the lake

 View of Lake Mille Lacs

Our site (#84)

 View of the road within the campground

Picnic shelter

bike/hike trails

Second picnic area and beach area

Cross Lake COE Park - June 20-22, 2014

We went up to Cross Lake COE Park for a weekend. We usually come here in the spring or fall as it's a difficult park to get into. They used to have free wood, but now it's $5.00/bundle. The park has very nice large sites, lots of biking trails around, close to shops and is right on Cross Lake.

Picture of our site.

On a bike ride we passed a classic boat show and sat for a while and watched.

The beach (unfortunately I didn't take a photo until Sunday morning when it was cloudy)

The dam (the water was very high)