The fort at De Hoge Veluwe National Park

Right in the middle of the Netherlands is De Hoge Veluwe National Park. The park covers more than 13,000 acres and has a mix of forests, sand dunes, open areas, lakes and other cool natural features.  But the coolest part about the park, and the main reason we decided to visit, are the 1,800 White Bikes that are free for visitors.  You can use the bikes, most of which come with child seats already attached, to explore  26 miles of paved bike paths.  In addition to adult bikes, there were also bikes for kids available.  The White Bikes are completely free, but cannot be reserved or locked.

Supposedly there are deer, wild boar and sheep in the park, but we didn’t see anything.  In fact, I think the only moving creature I saw was a giant beetle crawling around by my foot when we were eating lunch.  It was strange.  I didn’t even see any birds. The park wasn’t very crowded with visitors either, so it seemed at times like we had the whole place to ourselves.

We were cruising through the middle of nowhere in this giant park when we spotted the biggest, best fort ever.  I have a bit of an obsession with forts.  When I was a little kid, I loved building forts with big sticks out on “the Farm” in Manawa, WI.  I liked pretending it was actually my house and that I was going to survive (you know, for maybe 2 hours) in this fort.  I’ve always loved the movie Swiss Family Robinson because they have such an awesome tree house.  Someday, if I ever become an eccentric millionaire, I’m going to build a cool treehouse with multiple rooms and little pulleys to bring up water and rope bridges to connect the different rooms.  I’ll pretend it’s for my kids or grandchildren, but really it will be mine.

This fort was a giant lean-to constructed out of huge branches.  It was big enough for our whole family and tall enough that I could practically stand up.  It was also the perfect place to enjoy the picnic we had been biking around with for an hour in an extremely uncomfortable shoulder bag (definitely should have brought the backpack for this trip…).  I’m pretty sure the kids liked eating in the fort.  I’m pretty sure Brian would have rather eaten his sandwich while standing outside.  And I’m 100% sure I LOVED eating in the fort.

The park also had a restaurant, a cool lake with what Jack thought was a castle, a playground, a camping area and, randomly (at least in my opinion), the famous Kroller-Muller museum.  The Kroller-Muller museum has the second-largest Van Gogh collection in the world – almost 90 paintings and over 180 drawings.  We didn’t visit the museum because we had the kids with us and we had just been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam a few days earlier.

One of the things I really enjoyed about visiting De Hoge Veluwe National Park was the serenity.  After spending weeks in Amersfoort, London, Amsterdam, Brugge, Gent and other densely populated cities, it was relaxing to be somewhere where I felt alone.  There are so many things I love about the Netherlands with regard to how close and accessible everything is in the cities, but at the end of day, I love unspoiled natural beauty.