After a few days in a tiny, rural North Dakota town, just about anything other than staring at the…read moreclouds and putting on more mosquito repellant sounds like a great time. My dad-in-law suggested that we might check out a spot about 60 miles away in Minnesota on the Red Lake River that offered tubing. I've done the lazy river a few times at the Great Wolf Lodge, but I gotta tell ya... this sounded a helluva lot more exciting than what we had planned for the day-- so we loaded up the truck, gassed-up in Grand Forks, and headed across the Red River.
After a little negotiation with Waze, we finally found our way to the Voyageurs View Campground and Outfitters... it sort of looked like an Outback Steakhouse, except there were more cars in the "lot" (OK, a large field of grass where the cars were parked), and there was a Canadian flag flying along side the Stars and Stripes.
We walked over to a small window on the side of warehouse, paid some money, got our wristbands, and then walked over to an open bay where we were "outfitted" with big black innertubes. "They's the best for a'floatin' boy!"
The company retrofitted an old school bus (by painting it blue, chopping off the top, and installing bench seats instead of kid's seats), and we climbed aboard to take the couple mile drive upstream to the put-in.
The river flow had been really high a few days previous from intense thunderstorm activity, but the flows had backed off enough for us to go.
I've done my fair share of stream fishing, wading in chest high in places like the Truckee River, the Yellowstone River, the Snake River... well, the Red Lake River wasn't quite as tough as a couple of those spots at different seasons... but it was kicking pretty good when we went. I had a tough time keeping my 6 year old son and my 79 year old father in law upright in the river, holding on to their tubes, and trying to wade out towards the middle of the waist-deep river to hide behind a little island before putting out butts in and floating the rest of the way. With a little perseverance and a pretty good scrape on my ankle from a submerged rock, we all made it. The first little "rapids" was the most exciting... just don't hit the bridge embunkment... and then it's a fairly smooth float all the way down.
Along the way, there are some very pretty views that I got on my GoPro (I'll put them on here eventually)-- old riverside buildings here and there, but mostly nature. The sheer bluffs along the river are home to swallows who make their nests out of mud, and we saw a few turtles, catfish, wading birds and waterfowl. Somewhere towards the middle of the float trip, there is a shallow spot and a little sand bank that has formed an island... there, we were able to see dozens of Minnesota twenty-somethings wearing tiny little bathing suits, drinking plenty of beers, and participating in some sort of ancient pre-mating rituals. Breathtaking, I tells ya.
Somewhere towards the end of the trip, I thought I'd get a little adventurous (if there is such a thing on a flat floating river) and try to go over a couple of little ripple/rapids. All I really did was hit my butt bone pretty hard on a submerged rock, but wasn't the end of the world. The river slows down a lot right at the end where you get out, and when we saw the bridge to signal the end of our float, we all paddled over to the left without incident.
Overall, we had a great time as a family, the kids enjoyed the adventure, and we would totally do it again. Next time, I'm bringing a few more cold ones (you can rent a second tube for a nominal fee to hold your cooler!) And I might bring my aquashoes just for the entry, as it was a little rocky. But we'll totally be back to do this again some time.
