This is really short notice,

The wife and I need someplace to fly camp within 200nm of Minneapolis this weekend. The grass strip has to be >2,000' and allow camping on the field.

Any suggestions?

Todd Giencke

Todd, sorry nobody answered you. Where did you end up going?

Todd,

Sorry I didn't see this sooner. Take a look at East Gull Lake Airport, just west of Brainerd. Nice grass strip, several big resorts there, several really nice golf courses, and I THINK they permit camping at the field, but not sure about that. There are tiedowns there, as well.

Worth checking out, in any case. The City of East Gull Lake owns the airport, so they'd be the ones to call about camping.

MTV

Thanks guys,

Well it became a sort of cobbled together Memorial Day weekend for us.

Sat- Flew from Waconia, MN (1MN5 Home airport) to Wahpeton, ND (KBWP) for a birthday party. Boy was it cold! In the 40's. Then back home to Waconia.

Sat Night- Did a camp out at our home airport. It was one of those great memory nights with a fire, marshmallows, and even a movie on the laptop. But don't get the wrong idea. We don't drag the TV with us while camping. We just had planned on watching the movie and thought it would be nice with the fire by the plane at the grass strip. It was a great idea.

Sun- Flew to Stanton, MN (KSYN) to check it out for a place to fly-in camp. We aren't going to use it because of the road traffic noise.

The best part of the weekend was it convinced my wife of the pleasures of fly-in camping.

So...

We are going fly-in camping on weekends of June 23, July 28 (at Oshkosh!), and September 15th.

My wife doesn't pack lightly for camping. So I'm going to have to be creative with fuel loads and flight planning. This is one of the things that the Musketeer does well; it has a huge cabin. I can fit all of our camping gear, 2 full size bikes, 2 people and 3hrs of fuel and get off the ground in 2,500' on a 85 deg day. I know that a 180 would be a better plane but remember I have only 22k into this plane which has a 900lb useful load and can fill with 5.75hrs of fuel. I am seriously looking into getting a VG kit to try to shorten the takeoff roll.

In Minnesota I'm thinking on fly-in camping at Backus (7Y3), Bowstring (9Y0), Elbow Lake (Y63), Grygla (3G2), Henning (05Y), or Mahnomen (3N8)

I haven't checked out Wisconsin yet, but has anybody been to any of these strips?

MTV- I have been to East Gull Lake, nice resort but no underwing camping.

Does anybody want to do a camping fly-in on June 23rd or Sept 15th?

Well I babbled enough, Good night.

Todd Giencke

Sorry for the late post. Central county airport in Iola Wisconsin has an area on the field dedicated to airplane camping. If you call the manager he will leave the hangar open and you can use the bathrooms and the shower. If you go up by noon on Friday you can have the weekly meal served up by the central county flyers group. 6 bucks and all you can eat. There is a bar a quarter mile up the road that serves food and a gas station/ mini-market that has most of the camping supplies you will need. The camping area at the field has a water pump and wood cut for you to have a campfire. There also a picnic table or two. There is no fee to camp there.
A group camp-out sounds like a good idea. Let's get something going.