St. Croix Haven Campground, Hinckley, Minnesota

Finished our first week of work over Memorial Day Weekend which really broke us in - campground was packed with over 150 campers here. Rained a lot but people enjoyed themselves anyway. This place is big for ATV's and a lot of campers bring them. Lots of kids and family oriented. Getting our campsite ready and enjoying a campfire.

Took a drive down to the St. Croix River to take a look at it. Jim sitting with dogs by St. Croix River.

Jim spent a lot of his time blowing up inner tubes which the campground uses for tubing down the St. Croix River. 

Jim also had to wash the tubing bus in preparation for transporting the campers to the river.

People love going tubing. The river is shallow and slow - about waist deep which allows people to get out of their tubes and play in the river as they float down. 

There is another workamper couple that came in one month before we did - Terry & Evelyn. Evelyn and I work in the office together sometime and Terry works outside mowing lawns, etc. Jim's job has been helping guests with firewood and security. Monday Evelyn and I cleaned the bathrooms, which we will be doing every Monday. Takes us about two hours to do one bathroom - women's bathroom is a bigger mess than the men's. Monday I cleaned the game room and the other two bathrooms attached to the office then helped Jim clean out fire pits. This was pretty hard since it has been raining and there was a lot of wet ashes to clean out.

The campground is designed in cul de sacs with 6 campsites in each one. Many of the cul de sacs have lots of bushes around them and between the sites, giving the campers privacy. There are other single campsites that give the camper more privacy and other campsites in "fields" right next to each other. There is a lot of room in each campsite giving the campers a very nice campsite.

One thing Minnesota is known for is the bugs that change throughout the summer.  They were so bad that I had to buy a head net to put over my face when I went out walking the dogs. Mosquitoes and ticks are also really bad. Have to spray ourselves and the dogs every day just to be able to sit outside. Tried doing a few geocaches today - got two done - but the ticks and bugs were so bad we quit. On one we were stopped by a flooded road and could not go farther. It has been raining here since we got here and we finally have some nice weather. But by the time we got back to the car Hayley had about 10 ticks on her and Jim & I had quite a few as well. Seems hiking is not going to be one of the things we do this summer, especially if we have to deal with this many ticks and mosquitoes.

We were also visited by bears on occasion.  They would come into the campground and even climbed up a tree that was right in front of our trailer.

The bear came to visit on July 30. It woke us up about 1:30 a.m. with the dogs carrying on and barking. I was sound asleep but Jim heard something outside and goes to investigate. Seems the dogs scared a bear which ran up the tree which is right next to our Excursion. Of course Jim had to come in and wake me up, so I grab my camera and run outside to take pictures of it. 

Near the end of the season Jim starting cutting logs to season for next summer's guests.  He cut and stacked a lot of wood.