Andy and I went camping in St. Croix State Forest. State forests are free to camp in, and if worse comes to worse, you can camp anywhere (not in a designated site). Thankfully for us, it was high tick season, and most people stayed away from camping that weekend, we got our pick of sites! Not after getting lost though. St. Croix State Forest has terrible maps, intersections are not marked and exist and we were tricked into going on a path full of ticks that wasn't on the map.
The state forest is also home to lots of horse trails. We encountered many horse riders along the trails and stood aside to let them pass. It was really fun to see them around. One rider asked us if we lost our horses. Another rider told us that a beautiful, open campsite was not far away, and we got really excited. The rider failed to mention that the beautiful site was across a 20 foot river, running with frigid water. We had no horses to cross the river.
So we set off back the way we came, to look at a deciving map and figure out the next best campsite. Turns out, the next best one was pretty awesome! It wasn't too far from a marked intersection, it was down a little hill, on a curve in the river. It was probably one of the prettiest sites I've camped on. We were able to use our new water pump in the river and got cooking water.
It was a wonderful camping trip, no rain, nice people, a good 2 1/2 hour hike. Except the aforementioned high tick season. I've never gotten so many ticks in my life, in so many inconvenient places. I felt like ticks were crawling over me as I slept, which they were and I thre them out of the tent. It was probably the most insect-filled camping experience I've had. This was a great learning experience on when and where to camp and not to forget the bug spray. We high-tailed it out of that site as early as I thought decent to wake Andy.
