Thursday 9-28 Archie Campbell Memorial PArk

Early in the morning a rain storm came through and when we woke up the rain was still coming down. The forecast had not called for rain. We hung around in the Spirit Lake Casino parking lot waiting for the rain to go away. The weather channel said the rain was going to be gone by 9:00 and they were correct. 

Our next destination was only 40 miles away at Archie Campbell Memorial Park in New Rockford. As we were driving down the road our GPS stopped telling us where to go so Larry looked for a place to pull over to try to fix the problem. He found a place which happened to be Sully Hill National Game Preserve entrance. He was not able to fix the GPS but we decided to check out the game preserve.

In 1904 President Roosevelt made the Sully Hill a National Park. A few years later congress made it a wildlife game reserve and during the Great Depression in 1931 it was transferred to the Fish and Wildlife Service. It is 1674 acres of marshes and woods hill in the Spirit Lake Tribe reservation. It has 20-30 plain bison, 25-40 elk, 20-30 white-tail deer and a colony of prairie dogs. There is a short loop for cars to drive to see the reserve and a Visitor Center. We drove the loop. It was a beautiful loop with a lot of trees. We only saw one bison but we still enjoyed the drive.

The bison we saw

We arrived in New Rockford a little after 11:00 and went to town to fill up the Minnie with gas. Then we went to the Archie Campbell Memorial Park, which is the city park with RV sites with power for $12.00 a night. We were the only ones there so we had no problems getting a site. We setup for the night. It is a gorgeous park along the James River and is very well maintained. It has a swimming pool with a great slide, playground with a playscape, teeter totters, football field, baseball fields and a cool bridge that crosses over James River to get you from the RV area to the day area. After we had lunch we walked around the park. Then we went back to the Minnie and read. A little later I walked around for an hour. When I finished we went over to the restrooms to take a shower. The restrooms weren't heated but they were fine. The rain had left and the sun came out so it warmed them up. 

Camping at Archie Campbell Memorial Park

The bride that goes over the James River

The playscape for the kids

About 3:30 the football team showed up to practice. It such a small town that the high school only had nine players on the team. They practiced until 5:00. We watched them play a little. When they were getting ready to leave we had dinner. After dinner we went for another walk this time we walked through town. We had a very nice stay at Archie Campbell Memorial Park.