Moochdocking: It’s Free!
We finally arrived in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota to spend a few days with our dear friends. We were all in the Air Force together and hadn’t really seen each other in quite a few years. This was our first moochdocking experience and if all moochdocking is like this, then I want to do it more. Moochdocking is when you are invited to stay at someone’s house on their property, usually with some type of hook-ups. It was great to have water, electricity, and WIFI and still be able to spend time and have meals with our friends. They had lots planned for us including fishing, swimming, and tubing but first, we headed to Itasca State Park to see the Mississippi Headwaters.
Itasca State Park
Itasca State Park is located in Park Rapids, Minnesota only about an hour’s drive from Detroit Lakes. The park was established in 1891 and is Minnesota’s oldest state park. It spans over 32,000 acres and includes more than 100 lakes! It also boasts the headwaters of the Mississippi River as it begins its journey at Itasca before heading 2,552 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Entrance into Itasca State Park is just $7 per vehicle and there are a lot of outdoor activities. The park has a lodge, restaurant, camping, picnicking, and tons of walking and bike trails. You can rent boats, canoes, pontoons, paddle boats, and many more things from the Itasca Camp Store. We were there for biking! We brought our bikes while our friends rented them. They also rented a couple of trailers for the little ones to ride in. The trails are paved and go all over the park. We wanted to see the headwaters of the Mississippi so we rode there and had a picnic.
Mississippi Headwaters
The Mississippi Headwaters begin at 1475 feet above sea level. There is a nice picnic area and some benches to just sit and watch. You can take your shoes off and walk in the water or along a rock path to the bridge that crosses over the mighty Mississippi, well the beginning of it. It’s amazing to see how small the river is at the top compared to how big it is down in the Gulf of Mexico. After riding the trails for a couple of hours, we headed to a cabin on Tulaby Lake and some fun and relaxation before we continued our journey westward.
Our friend’s family has a nice “cabin” on Tulaby Lake…more house than a cabin. They took us fishing in the pontoon boat and Corbin caught quite a few fish. We did some tubing, swimming, and grilling and overall had a wonderful time with our friends and their children. Corbin loves being able to spend time with other kids as most of the time he only has Mom and Dad.
Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park
Campground
After a sad farewell with our friends, we drove to Bismarck, North Dakota to spend a few days at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. Chris loves history and the park has lots of that plus its own campground. The campground has 82 sites and was inexpensive at $25 per night for water and electricity. It had nice bathrooms with showers and a dump station on the way out. The campground was really quiet and peaceful with the exception of a nasty thunderstorm. Most of the activities within the park are either a short drive or a bike ride away from the campground.
Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, the oldest state park in North Dakota, was established in 1907. The park is situated along the Missouri and Heart Rivers and provides many outdoor activities. From fishing, boating, camping, horseback riding, hiking, and biking, there is so much to do. We had our bikes with us so we decided to do some biking and learn about the history of the park. The visitor’s center offers maps and ranger-guided tours and has a small store for snacks and drinks. We took the ranger-guided Mandan Indian village tour first for a small fee of $8 for adults and $5 for children.
On-A-Slant Village Tour
The Mandan Indian village, On-A-Slant, was named for its location on the banks of the Missouri River and originally consisted of about 85 earth lodges. The tour takes you through some reconstructed earth lodges and shows you how the tribal people lived and included a large council lodge. Each earth lodge usually had one extended family living in it, consisting of grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, etc. The Mandan Indians did not travel or move around unless they had to. They had more permanent settlements and other tribes came to them to trade goods or supplies. They fished, hunted, and grew their own crops and had very good defenses for their villages, using the river to their advantage. Our guided tour ended in the council lodge which had a nice fire in the center and plenty of seats for all the tribe members.
Custer House & Fort
The second part of our tour took place at Fort Abraham Lincoln and included the Custer House. The living history tour of Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s home took us back in time to 1875. Custer and his wife Elizabeth (Libbie) lived in a beautiful Victorian-style home, the “most beautiful and fancy in the Dakota Territory” according to our tour guide, one of Custer’s soldiers. The home is two stories and has lovely furniture with many original pieces saved from the house. Many parties and dinners were held at this house and Custer and Elizabeth lived there until Custer’s death at Little Bighorn in 1876.
Our visit to Fort Abraham Lincoln continued with a walk through the barracks, seeing and imagining how the men lived during this period. Everything was extremely organized and just as neat and tidy as military barracks are today. There is a big training field in front of the barracks and a commissary store where you can get snacks, souvenirs, or beverages and use the WiFi. The last place on our agenda to visit was the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum.
Free Museum!
The North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum is in Bismarck, North Dakota. This is a completely free admission museum! It’s open Monday-Sunday and has a museum store and a small cafe. The newest expansion of the museum opened in 2014 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the statehood of North Dakota. There are four major galleries that retell the history of North Dakota with interactive exhibits, models, fossils, and many other displays, including an inspiration gallery. They have temporary exhibits that come and go so you never know what you may find here!
This great museum helped explain visually how the Earth has changed over its life…from Pangea to the continents we have today. Corbin especially liked this part and kept going back to see it over and over again. The museum has many dinosaur exhibits and even one in progress. It shows you what the archaeologists are doing to uncover the fossil. You can learn about how important the horse was to North Dakota with a number of exhibits about the horse’s role in the military and areas of agriculture. They even have contemporary artwork depicting a horse. The museum was definitely a great find.
Onward we go!
We thoroughly enjoyed our time spent in Minnesota and Bismarck, North Dakota, and learned so much about the history of the area. Our next stop is Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the Medora Musical. We’re excited to meet our Minnesota friends there for a few more days of fun and relaxation!
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