Sibley MN State Park 2022
During this trip P was 8, T was 6, and V was 3 almost 4.
​
We were looking for a new MN State Park to visit. This looked like a fun one! We were excited to bring our canoe, the kids, and the dogs. For this trip, we had two 4 person tents, one for us, and one for the kids. My younger brother even came out for a day and spent the night. He ended up sharing the tent with me, and Marcus slept in a hammock.
​
The state park is on Lake Andrew, and it borders a lot of other lakes. This is a great park for people looking to spend a lot of time on the water. They had a boat launch, and rented canoes and kayaks. The small gift shop served as the rental shop. While we were there, we rented a tandem kayak for my brother and P, so we could have the other two kids and the two dogs in the canoe with us.
​
Lake Andrew had a lot of large boat traffic on it, so we stayed pretty close to shore. After we got back from canoeing Marcus took the girls out in the canoe to swamp it. Marcus could touch the bottom, and the girls had their PFDs on. This is a practice he's done fairly frequently with the kids. We feel that it's a good experience for them in a safe setting so that if it ever happened they would have an understanding of what was happening and know what to do. While he was doing this, I was standing on the shore with the dogs, my brother, and T. A park ranger was nearby and looked concerned. I let him know that Marcus was intentionally swamping the boat, and that it was our canoe. I also added that Marcus had done this several times as a kid in Boy Scouts, and he and I were both lifeguards.
They had a small beach area that the kids had fun swimming in the beach area. We hiked to the top of Mt. Tom one day, which is the highest point for 50 miles. It was a cool site to see! The top picture is at the lookout tower.
​
Someone told us about the playground at Robbins Island Regional Park. We drove there to get ice, gas, and let the kids nap. It was a fun playground, and the kids had fun playing there.
​
We also drove to Monson Lake state park, which was only 15 minutes from Sibley. We figured we might as well take a look and check out best campsites if we decided to go back. Monson Lake state park is really a small campground on Monson Lake. There is only one very short trail. This would be a great state park if you want to boat and fish the whole time.
​
While we were at Sibley state park we had a lot of rain and thunderstorms. Due to this, we weren't able to get out on the water as much as we would have liked. The hikes we went on all started in the rain. We had one beautiful afternoon, which happened to be the afternoon that my brother was out there with us. Max, our standard poodle, really doesn't like thunder. He was scared, and just wanted to stay in the tent.
​
We stayed at campsite 95. It was nice because we were a little isolated because we couldn't see other campers from our site. And we were close to the restrooms. The downside is that it was right on the road without any privacy, so anyone coming or going felt like they were walking through our site.
