May Camping in North Dakota is NOT Warm - Sheyenne National Grasslands

We live about 6 miles from the Sheyenne National Grasslands in North Dakota. It's a beautiful place to live, explore, hike through, camp in, hunt in, you get the picture...it's fricken' awesome. If I could legally live in a stick hut out there, I totally would.

There is one spot in particular that I love to visit in the summertime with my monkeys and that is the new bridge over the creek at ONE of the entrances to the grasslands.

Well, mother's day weekend came about and we decided we'd kick off the warm weather season in a tent in that very same favorite spot!

It didn't go as well as we'd planned (we nearly ended up with kidcicles by sundown) but we still had plenty of time to enjoy ourselves before we caved in, packed up, and thawed our toes back in our warm home. Luckily it wasn't too far away, we had to drive the 4 wheeler back and that was a chilly ride.

I had time to get some really nice shots of this very same favorite spot before we left:

Here you see the boy-man, exploring the wilderness. The boy-man is native to this part of the country and is comfortable in his surroundings. It is wise not to anger said boy-man - he throws things:

Here we have a lovely shot of the boy-man venturing out of the designated boy-man area, hunting minnows in the creek:

If you look closely in this one, you can see the girl-child burying her feet in the sand. She also enjoyed her surroundings until she tumbled about ten feet down a hill and smacked her sweet little girl child nose on a log. :( The girl child should also not be angered - for she bites:

As you can see, this is pre-tumble and she is still enjoying the sandy "beach" area: 

Next up we have the boy-man exploring the under-bridge territory with his sister's homemade (not very durable) clothes-hanger-butterfly-net contraption to better scoop up the minnows that he was very upset about not being able to cook:

A view from the top of the hill the sweet little girl child tumbled down (she made it about halfway before her head decided to go faster than her tiny feet): 

Here we have the very typical view of what everyone who hasn't been to North Dakota thinks North Dakota looks like. In short - it's flat. This is our campsite backyard view from the top of the hill:

Checking back in on the under-bridge minnow fishing expedition. He caught many a minnow that day, yet all were too small to fry:

After the boy-man was angered at not being able to cook up the minnows he caught...we grilled him up a cheeseburger and he posed with it - yes he actually posed for like 9 seconds with this burger hanging out of his mouth - while I got the camera focused to snap a picture of said boy-man in his natural feeding state:

Better get some lovely creeky pictures as well. This little creeky is corded off in cow season with electric fencing so we figured it'd be best to camp when there is no voltage going through the stream:

One more creeky picture in the opposite direction. The water was moving pretty fast, but wasn't too cold considering the chilly sunset temperature: 

That lovely sunset through the lovely trees: 

Hey, look! A log!! 

 An out of order later sunset picture. I could just move it to the end...but...well, I don't want to:

My sweet little boy-man posing with a fallen tree. I had asked him to go up the hill and fetch some firewood with his dad. When I went to check on them, the boy-man was down the road exploring and dad was running out of breath loading up firewood by himself. Seemed like a good time to snap a photo: 

Little pumpkin monkey girl collected firewood for us! 

And last but not least, the picture that should have been at the very top because it was the first one of the day - a shot of me in our driveway before we ventured off on this cold, cold camping trip. It went from 70-something and beautiful out to 40-something when the sun went down:

The end!