Barnesville
Campground
Wagner Park Campground
Nice low-key campground on the edge of town. The camp host is very nice and grows vegetables that he gives away.
Things To See
Food & Drink
The Purple Goose Eatery & Drinkery
Popped into town to get a quick beer and burger. This is a very cute place and the staff was fun to talk to. They also have an outdoor beer garden during Potato Days.
To make a long story short...
A funny thing happened on the way to Minnesota
Many months ago, we had grand plans to move north from Yuma, make our way into Utah, explore Idaho and Montana, and make our way east across North Dakota, and end up staying in Minnesota to see friends and family. As we were mapping out our stays, we were going to drop from Fargo ND into Minnesota and found a nice little campground in Barnesville MN. It just so happened that we were landing there during their annual summer festival, Potato Days.
As you may remember, my hometown summer festival is the Tater Toot, in Almond WI. I have played music there several times and I thought how fun it would be to play another potato-related summer festival! How many people can claim that?! So I contact the festival director and explained all this and asked if there was a way I could play at Potato Days. By the time she worked with her board and worked out the live music schedule, and found a time slot for me on their main stage, several months had passed.
When she did get back to me, we had already aborted all our plans to make our way through UT, ID, MT, and ND. We were going to MN for all of summer to help Barb's dad, Dean, get through radiation treatment (which he did, with flying colors!). But here she was saying that I could play at Potato Days. What do we do in situations like this? Say "yes". We figured that by that point in the late summer, we should really know what's going on with Dean and we might need a get-away. Worst case, I would go up there and Barb would stay with the family.
None of that worst case scenario happened so Barb, Polly, and I loaded up the GH1 and headed to Barnesville. We took in as much of Potato Days as we could; the rodeo, all the potato-related competitions, street vendors, music performances, potato pancake breakfast, car show, everything! We had a wonderful time!
I even wrote a song. Sort of. Toby Keith had just passed away earlier this year (2024) and one of his big songs was "I Love This Bar". I took the music for that song and wrote new lyrics, referencing all the activities of Potato Days and called the song "I Love Barnesville". There was a chance the local radio station was going to play the song as advertisement for the festival but I don't think that actually happened. I even created a music video for it! See below!