Lake Maria State Park

Lake Maria State Park

Well, we are keeping this moving forward.  With the goal of hitting all of the MN State Park Avian Geocaches this summer we need to start strong.  On top of this being our goal – there is also a hard stop.  The Avian Geocache program ends in October and it will be replaced by a new challange so the clock is ticking and we need to keep moving.

We have now done a bit of planning to figure out how to hit all of the parks.  I knew they were all over the state, but what that means is now sinking in: the farthest location is 340 miles from our house (Lake Bronson).  That is the same distance to Milwaukee.  The second farthest is over 330 miles (Grand Portage).  The distance between them is 438 miles – there are not a lot of roads in this part of the state!  These do not include if we decided to actually do the Garden Island Geocache and not the alternate – to get there you have to go to the Northwest Angle and take a boat through Lake of the Woods.  That is 405 miles and requires two border crossings.  You have to enter Canada and come back into the US to get to the angle. So that may be an adventure.

Back to today – we left the house around 2 pm – right when I got home from book club and headed to Lake Maria State Park by Monticello.

We got to the park and found the first sign.

We followed the road to to reach our next location, however we ran in to a small problem.  The road was closed for the winter.  So we jumped out of the car and loaded up the stroller, ready to roll.  It was over 60 degrees, but, because of the shade, there was still a LOT of snow on the ground.

We eventually found the next clue.  It was actually a bit back in the woods and Luke went to read it.  Quite a few hills.

So on the next set of coordinates.  Luke pushed Marucs in the stoller – that thing is great, but it's a beast!

After a bit we found the third and last location – this was one was fairly deep in the woods.

Hanging out in the woods.

Team "Mom and Marcus" find another one!

Also, a really cool view from the final geocache spot.  A campfire site was nearby and there was a great view of the surrounding lakes.

Marcus really loved walking on the snow. 

 Until next week!