Camping in North Dakota

Where is Icelandic State Park? Join us on a few days camping in North Eastern North Dakota

“North Dakota’s homesteading spirit is evident at Icelandic State Park, located on the shores of Lake Renwick. Established in 1964, this 912-acre park allows visitors to learn about the state’s early settlement and provides an array of recreational opportunities. Boating, swimming, and fishing are a few favorite summer activities while snowshoeing and cross-country skiing are popular during the winter. Picnic areas enable visitors to enjoy a relaxing afternoon in the shade of old oak trees.” Parks and Recreation for North Dakota

Last year when I visited Icelandic State Park near Cavalier, ND it was October. The days were short and cooler. I thought what a great place to go camping when we come back for harvest on a few of our days off from working harvest.

I looked up the dates for Labor Day weekend this year. The park was full. So with a few days off during the week and into the weekend before, we had plenty of choices. We had to wait until we knew the exact dates the guys would not be driving trucks in the field for Pre-pile of sugar beets.

Photo by Ryutaro Tsukata on Pexels.com

We now had the set date and were ready to book. Brian and I drove out to the park, about 10 miles away from the farm. We drove in and saw some of the hanging tags showing the space would be reserved for another camper. We picked out a few sites that would allow us to park next to our friend, making it easier to have meals, sit around the camp fire and hang out.

We drove back to the park office and checked to see that they were available. Everything we picked out was taken just not tagged yet. We asked the park ranger to mark on the park map what was still available.

We set back out to look at the few available spots left. We picked out the 2 that would accommodate both of our RV’s. They were fairly close to the bath house which was nice, but wasn’t so close we had lots of noise.

Of course it had been in the 60’s and 70’s the week before. We decide to do this trip and it ramps up a few days in the 90s and even 100 deg one day. Then the humidity was always 75% plus! I’m thankful we have the Cougar to stay in. When the sun finally started going down it barely cooled outside long enough to sit for awhile until the flies showed up. I think they were trying to eat us alive! Some really actually bit any exposed skin.

Brian and I did get one short walk in.

It was cool and shaded under the canopy of the various trees. Seeing the moss on the trees, the big mushrooms and florals reminded me of our lake home in Washington state. It was a very nice break from the heat and humidity!

(Click on the photos to enlarge)

There are a lot of squirrels in the park. They were all very busy collecting goodies for fall and winter. We watched one carry a pinecone bigger than it was through the forest canopy way up high. This one was eating what we think was a hawthorn berry. One closer to our campsite was eating a wild plum. The plum was almost the size of its head.

About half way through the walk Brian noticed a little log cabin style box nestled back in off the trail. We walked over to investigate and found it was a geocache box. For those who do not know what a geocache is, here is a brief explanation found on https://gisgeography.com/what-is-geocaching/

“Geocaching is a scavenger hunt-style game using a GPS receiver. It’s short for:

GEO: Geography for coordinate locations.
CACHE: Items stored in a hidden place.

When you put the two words together, geocaching is the idea of finding hidden items at specific locations.”

We have friends who really enjoy this activity. Maybe someday we will give it a try.

As we wound around the trail Brian pointed out a web covered in dew. I thought it was really pretty and tried to capture the droplets with my camera. No spider to be found in the web but the blown up photo really shows how intricate they are.

Sometimes something strikes you and makes you wonder what it might have been like to be traveling in the 1800’s making your way across the land from the east coast to the Dakotas. I thought it would be nice to make this next photo of a large pastured meadow into an old time sepia photo.

Seeing the possible storm rolling in. I thought it was beautiful!

We had one night that it wasn’t too bad and we were able to BBQ a steak on the camp ring grill. It was pretty rusty so Brian was going to use a wire brush on it to clean it up some. He went to the truck to get one. When he came back he had the drill gun in his hand with a grinding disk. All I could do was laugh and get a bit of video for this!

(Steak, Green Beans, Mashed Potatoes with homemade Gravy that our friend Lucas made)

Here are some more photos from our trip. I want to go back in the fall when the weather is cooler and the flies are not as bad. There are several trails in the park. I look forward to seeing the trees with fall colors on them.