Friday, August 26, 2022 Camden State Park: Renaming Trails and Inventing Games

We are somewhat surprised to find that this late into 2022, we’ve only done one hike. In past years, we’ve usually had 5-6 hikes tallied up by late August. With all our travels and a wedding in June out West, hiking hasn’t been on our minds. But recently my good husband spent some time working out an ambitious schedule to get us back on track (as it were) and here we are at Camden State Park, the first of 12 hikes to finish out the year.

At this point, all of our hikes are at state parks quite a distance away, so we’ll be doing a bit of camping on each trip. When we got to Camden, we decided to check out the campsites and get set up before embarking on the actual hike. Camden boasts of two separate campgrounds, the upper and lower. The park ranger explained to us that the upper campground sites were a little more private and there was a tiny bit of cell coverage there. The lower campground sites were well situated next to the river (where Kris had been hoping to do some trout fishing), but there was no cell coverage whatsoever. After cruising through both campgrounds and weighing the benefits and disadvantages of each, we settled on a homey site at the upper campground. By the time we had our tent and the screen tent set up, our stomachs were talking to us about the need for food, so we answered the call and had lunch. Even though it was 80 degrees out, it was shady in the screen tent with lovely breezes wafting through – pretty much ideal. It seemed likely that our hike would be quite pleasant. What a cock-eyed optimist I was!

The Hiking Club trail started out by the beach. We discovered that the swimming area was created by controlling the flow of water from the river on both sides, thus swelling into a beautiful little pool in the middle. Next time we’ll bring our swimsuits.

For those of you who have knee issues like I do, you’ll be interested to know that I left the hiking poles in the car for this hike, having purchased knee squeezers (can’t remember the name of them – basically pressure socks for the knees). I’ll give a review of their performance at the end.

The first part of the trail was a woodsy path that meandered alongside Indian Creek.. Other than the heavy humidity, it was a nice shady path.. The music of water running always makes for a light-hearted ramble. We hadn’t started the hike until 3:20 p.m., so we knew we weren’t hiking at the best part of the day, but it was a relatively short hike. I got my camera out and started photographing the usual suspects.

Before long, the trail took us out of the woods and out onto a prairie, very typical of state parks in this area. The map showed us that this part of the trail would be 1.3 miles and I noted that the shape of it looked like a horse head. That’s all I needed to rename it “Horsehead Trail.”

We were out in the sun now on a wide well-mown grass path which curved around and wound up and down. I tried not to think about my own discomfort in the heat. I wondered how all this hiking would have gone when I was in my 20’s. I’d like to think I was in better shape – certainly my knees were – but the reality is that I’ve never been a very sporty or athletic person. If I ever publish all my posts about our hikes, it will have to be titled “A Wimp’s Guide to Minnesota’s State Park Hiking Club Trails.” Catchy, no? Let me know what your blurb will say if I ask you to contribute one for the dust jacket.

Continuing to take photos here and there, I also entertained myself with thoughts about setting a D&D campaign in the state parks. To back up on that thought, I have written on my blog about grieving over the loss of my sister’s D&D journal, written in the person of her character, Druella the elf. My brother-in-law went above and beyond and found another copy deep in the bowels of his basement, so it is now in my grubby little hands. I’ve started reading it and so far all the action is in places where you go from one room to another finding things and encountering danger. The state parks would make a wonderful environment for a D&D! “The characters enter Camden State Park and navigate their way to the start of the trail. They are immediately attacked by a horde of whiny insects that seem innocuous until it becomes clear that they are bloodsuckers.” By the way, this wasn’t true in the case of our experience at the park – just taking artistic license to create some drama. The musical theme could be a hymn that we know entitled “I Walk In Danger All The Way” and there could be symbolism of spiritual battle throughout the game. You heard it here first.

As it was, I began longing for those wonderful breezes of before, apparently on vacation. I imagined them sipping iced tea in our screen tent, laughing and having an all-around great time while we slogged our way through the prairie heat. Eventually we had rounded the horse’s nose, traversed its ears and were making our way down the mane. I had been hearing blue jays and looked in vain for one – such beautiful birds with their calls that sound like a pump handle going up and down. It’s the definitive sound of the woods for me. One of their number took pity on me and dropped a feather where I could see it near the end of the trail.

We finished the 2.4 mile hike at 4:30.

The pool looked awfully inviting, but we weren’t equipped for a swim, so we went back to the car to do the next best thing: cool off by the artificial breezes of the AC in our car. I did some research later and found out that Willis Carrier invented air conditioning in 1902. Has he been properly lauded for this?

Thank God for Willis Carrier
Who made our lives much merrier.
He packaged cold air in a box –
Better than gold in old Fort Knox.
Next time you turn on your AC
Thank God for brilliant Willis C.

As we drove back to our campsite, we had the pleasure of seeing a deer by the side of the road. It must have been a youngling, for instead of running away, it stared at us and let me take a photo before melting into the woods.

Knee score: 5 out of 10. Short hike but with some hilly parts equivalent to 10 flights of stairs (so says my phone and I believe it).

Knee Squeezer performance: excellent! What a difference it made to wear these! Perhaps I should call them Knee Huggers, which has a much more benevolent ring to it.

This post will probably melt into the woods in the morning.

Next hike: Upper Sioux Agency State Park