Lake Shetek State Park near Currie, MN

Friday & Saturday, Sept 9 & 10, 2016

It has been raining hard since about 4am this Friday morning.  About 9am it finally slowed. Per the weather report, there is supposed to be a break for maybe an hour before it starts raining hard again. We decided we better get on the move and get out of the site we are in or we might get stuck in the mud.  (See the previous post of our site at Myre-Big Island State Park.)

Check out time at our new location of Lake Shetek State Park is not until 3pm so we decided to get out of our muddy site and go to a rest stop about 30 miles down the road.  We will wait for the rain to stop at the rest stop. We arrived at Lake Shetek about 1:30pm to mostly sunny skies.

We have a wonderful parking site at the end of a row.  Therefore we have a large side yard.  We have full-hookup and 50amp.  We really like this state park.

Low tonight is in the mid 50's and is in the upper 60's now at 6pm.  Dusty is excited to have a fire tonight.

While Dusty was enjoying the fire, Tic walked over to the lake to get some sunset pictures.

This is a fairly large lake.  Love the clouds.

Back at our campsite, the clouds are turning pink.  Love all the color.

Got the fires going good now.  Sm-mores are not on the diet so none tonight, but it is a good fire for that.

As the sun sets further, the clouds get more color.  Beautiful!

We have a waxing gibbous half moon tonight.  We are so blessed!

Saturday we walked around part of the lake and out to Loon Island.

This is part of the roped off swimming area.  Beautiful clear day, but too cool to be swimming.

This fancy staircase leads down to the swimming area from the restrooms.

We are walking through the park towards the boat ramp area.  The grounds here are immaculately kept.

Oh look a little fishing dock we did not know was here.  There are benches on each side.

There is a lot of history here.  Apparently the settlers and native Indians clashed here.  This is one of the settler's house.

Interesting chair inside the house.

If you blow this picture up, you can read a little about the settlers.

We will be walking across this causeway to get to Loon Island.  We enter the island through a tunnel of trees at the other end of the causeway.

We saw several kinds of birds.  This one is a downy woodpecker.  We also saw lots of black-capped chickadees and the white-breasted nuthatchers but they flittered around too much to ever get a picture.

Just a pretty view from Loon Island.

At another area on Lake Shetek, we saw this sign and thought it was interesting.  Be a sport .... throw back anything under 15 inches.

The farm lands around Lake Shetek are just beautiful.


Tomorrow we leave here and head into Iowa to visit with Tic's brother.

Myre-Big Island State Park near Albert Lea, MN

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Today we moved to Myre-Big Island State Park for just one night.  It has been raining hard, but is supposed to stop for a while.  It was sunny by the time we arrived at the park.

We got the last available 50amp site.  As you can see there are water puddles all around because of the heavy rains earlier today. 

After dinner we decided to walk around the campground and see the lake.  Hopefully we will be able to get some good sunset pictures.

We were surprised to see several pelicans.  Tic's new camera was able to zoom in and get this great picture.

We were walking on another trail and suddenly saw this deer watching us.  We were as surprised as she was.

There were lots of cormorants around this evening.  They make strange sounds. It was very interesting watching them.

Those are all cormorants in this tree.  

Sunset has arrived.  We got the pictures above and below and headed back to the coach.  The mosquitoes were out in force.  We felt we might get carried away if we didn't get back to the coach.

What a beautiful way to end the day! 

Walnut Grove, MN and Tracy, MN

Tuesday, August 26

The camp host stopped by and offered ideas on places to go and things to see in the area.  He was really big on Walnut Grove and their museum.  The first museum about the Ingalls family was when we entered Minnesota and made a day-trip thru Burr Oak, IA.
Mankato, New Ulm, Sleepy Eye and Walnut Grove are places you may recall if you ever watched the Little House on the Prairie TV series, or read the book.  They are all close by.

 

When we pulled up in front of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum we realized we had been to this exact place several years back when were in the area for a niece's wedding.  We remembered not being impressed, so we opted out this time.

Next we went through Tracy, MN. 

On the drive Tic saw these armor suits and had to get a picture.  This is the side of the front porch.  Amusing.

Tracy had a Museum of Wheels with Engine #9 on display.  Another view below.

If you wanted to pay $6 per person you could take a ride on this train.  We opted out and just took pictures of these people having a good time.
   

Currie, MN

Wednesday, August 27

Today we drove around the little town of Currie.   Currie is in Murray County, Minnesota. The population was 233 at the 2010 census. Lake Shetek State Park is nearby. The city is known as the "Gateway to Lake Shetek".

The main attraction in Currie is the End-O-Line Railroad Park.

After getting some pictures we headed towards the visitor center and discovered the park was closed, so we did not get to go into any of the buildings.

This caboose was by itself.  By the ramps leading up to the front and back we are guessing that when the park is open you can go inside the caboose.  In front of the caboose is a little tug that was used to move cars around within the train yard.

Here is the steam engine with coal car on display.

This car was just behind the coal car.  They had replicated several buildings that would be found around the train station and in the town in the 1800's.  See below.

There was even a display of buffalo roaming in the prairies. 

Next we went to the other point of interest.

Keep looking.  You are going to be impressed.  Hee Hee

A little history about the Des Moines River for you. 

This is the Currie Dam.  Yes we even were allowed to walk across the walkway to the other side.

This is the walkway across and the view upstream.

This is a picture from the other side of the river.

This is the view down stream from the dam.

Later in the evening we drove to Sibley, IA and met Tic's brother and his wife at the 1015 Steakhouse to celebrate her birthday.  We shared a KC strip.  It was satisfactory, nothing special.  Best part was the company.

Welcome, MN and Lake Shetek State Park in Currie, MN

Friday, August 22 thru Tuesday, August 26

Welcome, MN - August 22-24
We stopped in Welcome for 2 nights.  There was not anything special to see.  We did drive into Fairmont one morning for a farmer's market.  In the same parking lot there was a vintage car show with 60's music.  We did not take any pictures of either the farmer's market or the car show.

This is our camping site at the Welcome Campground.  We did have 50 amp with FHU.  This park is part of our Coast to Coast membership.

This is our site from the other side.  We faced north so had trees providing shade on both the east and west sides.  It was a fine stop for a couple of nights.  I was able to catch up on the laundry so I was happy.


Sunday, August 24 we left Welcome for Lake Shetek State Park near Currie, MN.  

Beautiful fields!  It was a hazy day, because of the high humidity.  The last 2 days we felt like we were in Houston, TX.  90ish degrees with 90% humidity.  YUCK!  Awe don't you feel sorry for us? :-)

We are still amazed at all the corn and soy bean fields! Mile after mile of food for the world.

By the time we arrived at Lake Shetek State Park, we were the only ones in this area.  Obviously the flags are not flying yet. Notice the clouds are building so it is cooling off.  Low 80's now.

Now our flags are flying.  What a beautiful day!!!

The clouds are building and gorgeous!

This is sunset the first night.  We will be here 8 nights.  This post will cover the days we stayed in the park and or worked on projects.

Each evening we have been able to watch the deer grazing close by. There are a couple more pictures just below this.

I blew this picture up so it is a little blurry.  The white tail deer here are so much bigger than they are in Texas.  

The word "Shetek" is Ojibwe for "pelican," a bird which visits Lake Shetek during the summer and fall. The park contains the largest lake in southwestern Minnesota, which forms the headwaters of the Des Moines River.

This is the Shetek Monument memoralizing the pioneers slain by the local Indians.  

This is on the side of the monument.

In case you cannot read the sign, it says, "At this site lie the bodies of 14 people buried in a mass grave ten feet long, four feet wide and four feet deep. These are the remains of the six adults and eight children killed either at Lake Shetek or at the slough on August 20, 1862.

As we turn from looking at the monument we see this doe and her fawn.  We have see lots of does with their fawns. 

Then we saw this doe on a hillside.

As we were driving back to our campsite we saw this doe.  She thought she was hiding.

Another time as we are driving out of the park this doe slowly ambled across the road. I even had time to get a second picture with my slow camera.  See below.

We have discovered that our over-the-air TV is not dependable.  So Tic decided to build an antenna like he built in Weatherford.  (Tic also helped Kathy build one).  Here is Tic just getting started.

I even got to help with the gluing.

Well we got the copper wire attached.  Next step is to attach the wire fencing for the reflector. 

Here is the finished gray hoverman TV antenna.

We also made a base for the antenna.  Here it is sitting on the Jeep.

We decided that was not high enough so put it on top of the coach.  The reception greatly improved!  My Honey is so smart!

Another afternoon we took a walk across a causeway to Loon Island, which is part of Lake Shetek State Park. 

This is the causeway from the boat launching parking lot.  It has been raining off and on today.  We snuck this walk in between rain showers.

This is the causeway walkway. 

Half way across the causeway Tic stopped to take a picture of this storm cloud as we faced southward.  

Tic got a panoramic of the view looking northward.  What a display of Gods power.

As we walked around the island, we saw these two trees that grew together.  We had not ever seen this before.  

Just a short distance after we saw the tree above, we saw two more trees that had grown together.

We saw several deer on our walk.  We were able to get a picture of this one before she ran off.
It started thundering again and thought we should hurry back to the car.

As we came back across the causeway, Tic stopped and got this storm cloud as we were looking southward.

And when we turned facing northward this is what we saw.  The clouds were so white looking northward.

This is a cabin from one of the original settlers here at Lake Shetek. We made it back before the rain came again.  It never rained hard or long.  We actually enjoyed the rain today.

Today is Monday, Sept 1.  We leave today for Spirit Lake, IA.  We will be there 11 nights.
Looking forward to new adventures.