Lac qui Parle State Park
We had some big plans for today, so we got the earliest start so far, and were out the door on our next goecaching adventure. We left at 9 am and took Highway 7 straight east in order to head back into the tall-grass prairie biome of Minnesota. Our first stop was the farthest on today's list: Lac qui Parle (pronounced sort of like "Lah-kah Parlah") State Park in Watson, MN.
One of the interesting things about today's adventure is that we primarily followed the Minnesota River Valley and saw a lot of the historical Sioux lands, reservations, and locations that were involved in the 1862 Sioux conflict.
We got to the Rangers Office and had a chance to see some awesome taxidermy displays. This park is extremely well-known for the very large numbers of birds that migrate through this park (we were not there at the right time, so we didn't see that many "Bock Bocks" as Marcus would call them, but I would like to go back and see it at another time). The lake was huge and very beautiful (and full of whitecaps on a blustery spring day – thankfully, no rain at all even though it had rained a lot recently).
It was also extremely windy all day long as the sound in this video conveys!
The exhibits were pretty cool. Marcus really liked looking at all of the birds and animals (and the bearskin rug inside the taxidermy room).
After we had checked out the information center, we went in search of the geocache, but we ran into something even cooler. This is where the largest known plains cottonwood tree in the state of Minnesota is located. It is right off the road with a small, and quite easy-to-miss, sign to tell you it is there just over the crest of the hill on a small dirt path.
The pictures really don't properly do justice to the size or the scope of what you see.
You can see the first view of the tree. And then Luke in it for perspective.
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| Marcus decided he wanted to climb up too! |
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| The bark's ridges were think enough to actually grab onto and almost climb! |
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| Saying this tree is big is an huge understatement! |
Now that we found the tree, it was time to go on for our actual goal: the geocache! It was actually located on the far side of the lake and this would be what I would consider a car cache – we only had to step 5 feet from the car to "get it done".
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| Location #1 screamed geocache from a distance. Once we saw this we knew the rest would probably be easy! |
So we went on to Location #2...
This is a picture of the view from this side of the lake (we had to backtrack and drive all the way around to the lower campgrounds/beach area from the main office). If the birds were migrating right now it would have had THOUSANDS of geese, ducks, and other water fowl. I wish we would have seen that!
Now off to the next and final location.
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| This was an easy find – we drove it and spotted it from a distance. |
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| It was extremely windy; please ignore my hair! |
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| Since this was so close, Marcus did not even get out of the car, but you can see him examining his new "Bock Bock" card. |
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