Category Archives: National Forest

Kabetogama State Forest and Voyageurs National Park ~International Falls, MN

We camped at the Woodenfrog Campground in Kabetogama State Forest in northern Minnesota. The girls loved all the deer at the campground(the boys stayed with their grandparents).
This was dry camping and I have to admit the vault toilets were chilly, especially at night but it was not bad at all! With his girls. Voyageurs National Park does not have any land access campgrounds so we stayed at the nearby Kabetogama State Forest. Nick and I have canoed out to the National Park to camp before though! The campsites at the Woodenfrog campground were beautiful! And there is a trail right at the campground that was beautiful as well.

You could just walk this beautiful campground road.

So pretty.
We borrowed Nick’s parents camper.

We kept nice and warm inside the camper even without hookups 😉

Used power from batteries(recharged with generator during the day) to run fan for furnace and the gas furnace.

Kept it a little chilly to make sure we did not run out but it worked great. This was the campground trail. Amazing. You can access some of the Voyageur trails by driving.

The Echo Bay Trail was near the campground and was beautiful.

Trying to not share all the pics but it is so hard to choose! It was magic. Something magical happened while we were up there also…

It snowed! We found this road on the side of the road by International Falls. We stopped though and big beautiful flakes started to come down! The twins were not sure about the cold but Little Bit was as happy about the snow as I was! We walked on the Kab-Ash Trail for a little bit but it was really wet and it kept switching to sleet instead of snow so we did not hike long. The next morning we woke up to…

me squealing.

Because of this!!!!

There was a bit of a concern about being able to get out but we made it!

We stopped at the Echo Bay Trail on the way out and I took some snow pics before we headed back to his parents. Thanks for showing off northern Minnesota!

Garden of the Gods ~Hoosier National Forest, IN

 

I purposely made our route home go past the Shawnee National Forest so we could go on the Garden of the Gods hike again!

My kids raved about this hike last year when we went on it!

Of course when we got there my girls started complaining about hiking and said they did not remember it… Thankfully they remembered it when they started climbing and I heard how much they loved this hike over and over. The views are amazing! Little Bit really wanted to climb like the big kids.

Thankfully there are lots of rocks to climb that are not high and nowhere near a drop off. This kid is awesome with her.

He kept telling her where it was safe for her to go.

You don’t have to climb on this trail.

You can stay on the path and just enjoy the views.

At under 2 miles and a loop, this would be a pretty easy hike if you wanted.

Of course my kids don’t like the easy way. You can see my oldest daughter’s shirt behind me in this group pic.

I did not realize she was not in the shot until everyone had already walked away…

HA

I had her come back for another. Hard to see why I want to go back here over and over, right?

I never knew how beautiful Southern Illinois was.

Amazing.

 

You can get a look at what it was like to hike there with 5 kids here.

Hemlock Cliffs ~Hoosier National Forest, IN

This was another one from the list of Top places to hike in Indiana.

I had really wanted to hike in Hoosier National Forest but was not sure where to hike so I am really glad I found this one.

It was a beautiful hike!

It was not very long either.

Under 2 miles.

The hike actually goes up on the cliffs! Which was amazing and a bit scary with 5 kids.

Ha

There was a dispersed camping spot right outside of the parking lot for here but someone was already in it.

I thought we would just stumble on another spot to stay at for the night but we did not.

So I chickened out and we stayed at a city park close to the border of Illinois.

I am finding that city parks are pretty cheap and so far pretty nice.

This one was the Lynnville Park Campground and was $18 a night for Electric and Water.

It had a nice lake right next to the campground.

The biggest plus was being a lot closer to Shawnee National Forest!

Which is where we were headed the next day!!!