Biking-Camping West Central Minnesota

Pearson's Century Farm, Litchfield, MN

This year's annual summer biking-camping adventure with Bud was to west-central Minnesota. Short cut to video montage.

We were kinda in the middle of a triangle drawn from Wilmar to Litchfield to Hutchinson. This was another HipCamp site on a farm with goats, a cow, a burrow, chickens, and lots of cats.

The drive out on Monday was less than 2 hours. To be honest, the farm is in the middle of nowhere. Acres and acres of farmland were everywhere around. There are basically two crops: soybeans and versions of corn. That's it! The acreage of these two crops goes on and on and on. There are patches of trees (mostly oak) and lakes or ponds generously sprinkled in.

The "camp" is on Pearson's Century Farm. I forgot to let the owner, Travis, know when we were arriving, but he quickly responded to my text to let us know where the campsite was located. If we had been paying closer attention, we would have seen the "Campsite" signs.

We've gotten pretty efficient on setting up our campsite, so we were done in a few minutes. I should mention that most of Minnesota, including where we were, was under an excessive heat warning. We discussed not going at all but were glad we did. At least we were out of the urban heat island and fortunately had a very shady campsite.

Bike transport

I searched AllTrails to find a paved biking trail that would be mostly shaded. We knew driving to bike trails was in our future. We drove to Wilmar, MN to ride the Glacial Lakes Trail to Spicer, MN - 14 miles ride trip.

Back at campsite Monday evening for dinner of hamburgers, corn on the cob and baked beans. After dinner was a short walk to the sunset meadow.

Tuesday morning, we had a big breakfast in camp before driving to Hutchinson (Hutch to the locals) for a trek on the Luce Line Trail. We got about halfway to Winsted before we ran into trail re-construction and turned around. 

Back in Hutchinson (they go big on their parks), we cooled off at the Dairy Queen before heading west bound for a few more miles. The heat was intense this year, so our rides were shorter than on previous adventures.

The need to cool off was high so we found a local public beach in order to get into some water. Lake Manuella has a nice sandy bottom with warm water, but it felt so good to get wet (that wasn't sweat).

Dinner Tuesday evening was in Litchfield next to Lake Ripley but too hot to sit outside. It might sound counter-intuitive, but a campfire Tuesday night kept the mosquitoes away for a while.

Back to Minneapolis Wednesday just in time for the worst wildfire smoke ever! Looking at the maps, the wildfire smoke was even worse just where we left so the timing was perfect.

Memorable sights: sandhill cranes; lots of pelicans; beautiful lakes and ponds; huge acres of soybeans and corn; majestic oak trees; amazing bird songs in the early mornings; Hutchinson park system.

Video montage.