Minnesota DNR Avian Adventure Conclusion:
Itasca State Park
"The lake was Itasca and the stream, a twelve-inch-deep rush of cold clarity over humps of boulders, was the Mississippi River. I crossed it in five steps. The Father of Waters, beginning a two-thousand-mile journey to join the source of all waters, was here a newborn – small and pure." —William Least Heat-Moon's "A Backroad Journey Around America"
What a summer this has been! We finished our journey on Oct. 25th – less than one week before they wrapped up the Avian Adventure Geocaching Challenge at the end of the month. We were super excited about the final trip to Itasca. This is, of course, the quintessential Minnesota state park, and I had never been there this late in the season before. We spent the night before in Pierz – this means that we only had a 100-mile trip to get to the park. This set us up perfectly. Our goal was to get to the park nice and early so we could spend a bit of time at the park and make sure that we were there at the same time as the park ranger (it would seriously suck if we made it all this way only to run into a problem and have the ranger station be closed...!).
We got to the park right around 1 pm. This was just about perfect – Marcus had just woken up from his nap and was ready to roll. I had already completed the final clues for the final geocache (remember we grabbed a copy of the sheet when we visited this part earlier in the season for the regular Avian geocache here), so I knew where the actually starting point was, but Luke wanted the entire experience, so we stopped at the park headquarters to grab another copy of the sheet so he could complete it, too! Just a reminder: the clues were posted right outside the door of the main visitor center.
We walked into the visitor center and learned that it was a youth deer-hunting weekend. Fortunately, the area we needed to go to was not impacted by the deer hunting.
While Luke sat down and worked on the final questions for the coordinates, Marcus and I went and checked out the exhibits. The visitor center at Itasca has a super-cool exhibit area, so if you go, make sure to save some time to see it. It is like a lodge with all sorts of animals and displays that are really neat.
I think that Marcus could spend hours here and not get bored. There are a lot of different dioramas of birds and bears. Marcus loves these. He thinks it is super cool to get so close to the animals. I don't think he understands that they are not "real" (live) animals and that they have been set up.
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| "Bock Bock." What all birds say, including trumpeter swans. |
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| "More birds..." (State bird, in fact!) |
After Luke completed the puzzle, we were off to the next point – which was at the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Itasca is a huge park (over 32,000 acres or 50 square miles); it is actually the second largest state park after St. Croix State Park, and it was about a 9-mile drive to our next stop.
We finally made it to the next stop... this was at the headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi at the Mary Gibbs Mississippi Headwaters Center. It looks really cool and has a restaurant, a museum, bathrooms, and a gift shop... too bad for us that it was all already closed for the season! (It was open last time we were here, and there were people from all over the country and world everywhere.)
Well, I got a few things ready at the car; Marcus and Luke explored the area and found an actual phone booth. Needless to say that Marcus LOVED it.
One of the cool things about this area is that it had a huge outdoor display that included maps of the Mississippi River and lots of information about the river. We all checked it out.
We didn't spend too much time reading as we had to trek on ahead to find the first geocache location. We headed down the path toward the headwaters.
In the early parts of the Mississippi river it meanders a LOT – even on our way down to the actual headwaters we crossed it twice. Marcus and Luke even walked down and checked it out.
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| Quite still at this time of the year. |
We were really close now... to both the coordinates and the headwaters. We have been here quite a few times before (although it has always been in the summer or early fall), and it was nice being here when it was not quite as crazy with people as those more popular times of the year. It was still busy (constant flow of people on this day), but it was also pretty peaceful at the same time. The air was a little chill, but the sun was out, and it wasn't too bad at all.
We made it to the headwaters, and the GPS told us we were very close to our first clue.
It didn't take long for us to find it. This little film canister was tucked into a custom-made shelf on the back of the toilet sign. Very clever... but we have seen enough of these this summer that they didn't stump us. We entered the coordinates and realized that the new set was going to bring us right back up to the parking lot. There was also a clue on the sheet that looked like a combination to a lock... hmmm...
We had plenty of time left (we now know when the park rangers were set to leave for the day and we didn't have to worry about the office closing), so we took a bit of time to explore the headwaters. Marcus loved it. Not a surprise because he loves all things water. I think his favorite thing was going in a circle; first, we would walk across the log bridge, and then we would cross back over walking on top of that iconic line of rocks that mark the start of the river.
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| Watch your footing! |
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| Marcus: "I got this..." ... or maybe not quite ready yet to solo it... |
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| Looking out on the north leg of Lake Itasca. |
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| This picture is actually from Wikipedia showing the outlet of Lake Itasca and the start of the Mississippi River. The wooden sign declaring the river flows 2,552 miles from here down to the Gulf of Mexico is at the left side of the photograph. |
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| A map from Wikipedia showing the shape of Lake Itasca with its three major arms. The river actually starts by flowing north out of the lake as seen here (north is up). |
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| Quite a few people were at the headwaters on this day! |
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| Vonnie making the crossing. |
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| It looks like someone fell in judging by the angle of this picture, but no one actually ended up getting wet. |
We played for a while, but eventually we knew it was time to go and find our final prize: the final "Bock Bock" card!
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| Marcus LOVED this sculpture – it had lots of turtles. |
Right up near the front, we found the lock box that contained our final prize... and now we had the combination and were ready to roll!
We were all so seriously excited about this final stop... I couldn't stop smiling, and Marcus knew this was a big deal. We got the lock opened on the very first try, and then we were in! We spent a long time just hanging out and looking at all of the things that were in the box. We read the log book (in a funny moment we forgot to sign it and had to come back the next day actually) and just enjoyed the moment. This was an awesome day!
Here are a few more pictures from our awesome day!
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| Marcus found a water pump and was very sad to find out that it was turned off for the season. |
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| This is the eponymous Mary Gibbs, namesake of the Visitor Center. This part of the park was named after her for her efforts to preserve the headwaters area. |
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| My boys! The water here is fairly shallow, and as you can tell, he is pretty undaunted after having crossed over the stream a few times already. |
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| The final geocache photo of the year! |
Now the grand adventure is over. It is kind of hard to believe that we completed this. (We actually had attempted an earlier DNR Geocaching Adventure and completed a dozen or so parks back in 2010, but we were not as serious as this year... and Marcus wasn't around yet, just Sandy). It is also pretty awesome. The final step in our adventure was not actually another trip, but instead it was an upload. The Minnesota DNR keeps a website to track all of the finishers. The rules are simple: upload a picture, and make sure that you have a copy of the final card in it. They have kept a similar website for the people who finished the previous DNR geocaching challenges. The link is below if you want to check it out.
When I posted this final blog our picture was the second one on the slide show. The actual slide show contains the pics of the 43 groups of people that finished the Avian Adventure. Seems like a pretty elite group to be a part of to me... I also think that Marcus was the youngest finisher!
