There are too many people in Minnesota

It's tough to find a town that is small enough to let me camp in their park.

Monday, 21 July: After three days of talking, eating, swimming, croquet, minigolf, Skip-bo™, talking, and eating with my cousin and her family, I rode off into the sunrise. Well not when it was actually rising, but, you know, east. I was planning to go see another cousin in the twin cities, but I couldn't get ahold of her, so I rode east on 95, a ways north of the cities. It was an uneventful ride. Toward the end of the day I started looking for a place to camp. The towns along the road were either too large or too small to camp in. I stopped at a county park along the way, but there was a sign that expressly forbade camping. I was thisclose to breaking the rules, but chickened out at the last minute. (Goody two-shoes! I haven't camped illegally this whole trip!) It was a huge, wooded park with lots of trails that seemed little used but well maintained, so I probably wouldn't have gotten caught. I was a bit worried about the type of person who would find me out there, though, just off the highway not too far from a larger town, and there was also no bathroom and ridiculous swarms of mosquitoes, (there were also wetlands there) so I moved on. I called a campground about six miles off my route, and the helpful woman I talked to suggested I call the fairground in Cambridge, which was just a few miles further. She told me they normally allow camping, although they were setting up for the fair on Wednesday, so they might say no, but I should tell them I was on a bike. She even looked up the number for me. She also said something about the route that the cyclists are normally on that suggested I may have meandered my way almost back to the adventure cycling route. I may check that out, since I still have no set route to Chicago, and it's a bit more populous over here than it was going through Montana and North Dakota, so I'm feeling less comfortable with choosing my own route.

I called the fairground and they took pity on me, so I came on over and set up camp. The fair set up was in full swing, so there were lots of loud trucks and things and carnies everywhere. Shudder. They told me it was $17, and when I exclaimed at the price, they knocked $2 off for the "fair discount." I should have kept exclaiming, but I didn't want to be a cranky-pants, since they weren't technically allowing camping anyway. I can't believe that the normal price is $17. The bathrooms are kinda grody, and there was barely any water trickling out of the rusty old showerhead. They had just painted the bathroom door, and left it propped open a bit, so there were more mosquitoes inside than out. I had to kill at least five of those varmints while showering. It actually wasn't too buggy outside, so that was some consolation. My plans of blogging and going to bed early were blown when I started chatting with a carny who is kinda into biking and has done a bit of touring himself. Oh well, I can sleep when I'm dead.