By Kelli Bowen
This past weekend, we took our 30-year-old camper, which I’ve lovingly named “She’s A Beaut” out for the first time this season. Mother’s Day weekend is my “off” weekend during the hectic season, so we wanted to do something just for the four of us, well six if you count the dogs. We went to Lake Ashtabula north of Valley City for some North Dakota fun. As we loaded up the camper and took off, we looked at the clock and realized we were close to Hangry-o-clock, so I called ahead to Pizza Corner in Valley City and ordered a couple pizzas, pepperoni for the girls and a manhandler for the adults (insert angel singing).
When we arrived at the campground, we stopped by the host site, made sure we were all good and then found our spot. I had reserved the site online, which is what I “normally” do, so I wasn’t 100% sure where it was. It was AMAZING! The grass sloped to a little strip of beach and then water. There were trees on each side as a buffer from other humans. It was like our own little slice of heaven.
The girls went and played in the sand and came back smiling with frozen appendages. We set up right at the golden hour so every photo I took looked just a little extra beautiful. It was fantastic.
We went foraging for fallen twigs and sticks for our campfire and made s’mores. Including what we call “mom s’mores”. That’s when you replace the chocolate with a Reese’s peanut butter cup: SO GOOD. We had hotdogs on the fire and read silly poems in the camper before bed.
There wasn’t cell service so our phones were mainly just a time piece that took pictures. We did a lot of fishing, including Miss A coming out to cast her line a few more times before bed, clad in her footie pajamas.
We had a hotdog taste test where we propane grilled as well as wood-fire cooked hotdogs to see which is better. Spoiler alert: a hot dog is a hot dog to me and I’ll eat it, especially with cheese, ketchup and mustard. *Gasp*
After a weekend of walks, campfires, playgrounds, fishing, marshmallows and hotdogs, we drove back to the real world. The whole way we discussed where else we want to take “She’s A Beaut” this summer, and I snuck back online and reserved this particular Ashtabula campsite for one more weekend this summer.
May your weekends be magical and your hotdogs be properly topped this summer.
Kelli makes her home in Cass County with her husband, two daughters (8 and 5) and two dogs. She works for a regional seed company by day and tries to be an alright mom, wife, friend and writer by night.
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