Secret Gem Indeed -- Camp Lakodia!

I went out in my waders Wednesday and collected another set of water samples for the East Dakota Water Development District bacteria monitoring project. On my stop at Camp Lakodia, I found the facility busy with buses and well-dressed high school kids from Madison, Howard, Harrisburg, West Central, and elsewhere. Turns out they were here for a large-group choral contest.

What a great location for a music contest! Usually these contests take place at high schools or college campuses, where there are all sorts of distractions, like students going to classes and bells going off (you'd be surprised how hard it is to shut off the computerized bells in some schools). Out at Camp Lakodia, there's only one distraction: spectacular natural beauty. The choirs performed in the big dining hall (the boys I talked to said the acoustics are quite good), then stroll around the grounds and out to the gazebo on the peninsula. Gorgeous!

My wife and I have speculated that Madison should resurrect the Lake Park Hotel as a downtown convention center that could host contests and conventions (there's something the city could do with the Rosebud building! bulldoze it and build Madison Square Garden II!). But if we really want to showcase good reasons to move to Madison, we could simply promote Camp Lakodia more. The facility could host school music and speech contests, conferences, and small conventions. It could host old-style Chatauqua events, complete with lodging for the speakers and performers, much like the Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder. And it would be a great site for an Obama-SD campaign rally (complete with wireless Internet, so I could live-blog the event!).

Bring more young people and business visitors here, have them meet and perform and relax at Camp Lakodia, and they'll say, "Wow! This place is great! We're coming back!"