Wild River State Park

For some reason Wild River State Park is really annoying to both Luke and I – it is not on the way to anything and not really close to anything either.  Since we started the day in Blaine at the super rink it seemed like a good day to get this one out of the way.

When we left Blaine we put the address in the GPS and we were on our way.  This was not, however, the most direct route as it led us to the exact center of the park and not an entrance at all.  So after looking up more information we found our way to the main gate.

The good news today was that the ranger station was actually open.  We went in to get a map of the park and told the lady that we were going to be geocaching today.  That is when she gave us some bad news.  A volunteer had noticed that the signs were not in great shape and had taken down the geocaching coordinates signs and they would not be up again until Tuesday.  This was not happy news for us – we explained that we had driven over 60 miles just to do this geocache challenge and we would be extremely disappointed if we could not do it.  It seemed like we were out of luck when she offered to give us copies of all of the coordinates – YEAH!  I actually think she only offered because Marcus was so cute!  So off we went!  She did make us promise not to cheat!

Here are our photo copies of the sheets

We drove up to the visitor center and parked the car.  There was another car by us and a family with young kids running around.  We were just sitting in the car, getting everything ready for the day, when we heard a loud sound  – "Splat!!".  One of the kids – he looked like he was around 4—5 years old – had thrown a snowball at the car and it hit Luke's door.  We both just cracked up, laughing.  The kid's dad did not look very happy and was super embarrassed.  It was probably the funniest thing all day.

This is the where the next coordinates belong.

We got out of the car and started on our way to the first and last point.  You can see the wooden box – that is where the actual geocache ammo box is stored.  It had a padlock that required 5 letters to open.

Since we had all of the cards – we actually had the answers, so we opened it up right away and got our card.  But, since we promised not to cheat, we decided to walk the entire route.  I had already programmed all of the waypoints into the GPS so we didn't think it would take very long.

Marcus holding up the card for us to examine.

Map of Wild River State Park

This park is a lot prettier than I remembered it.  Very hilly (it is in the St. Croix River Valley) and full of oak trees.  This is also an oak savannah.  With the weather being a bit colder this really felt like a fall day.

We quickly found our way to the 2nd set of coordinates and to our surprise – they were still posted!

On to the next cache... this multicache was actually the longest we have seen with a total of 5 waypoints to visit.

We quickly ran into a unexpected problem.  The St. Croix river was over it's banks and the next waypoint was under water.  We decided to try and get to it from the other side.

Vonnie treading into the water...

Luke figuring out how to get there.

Marcus making the executive decision on where to go next.

Since we ended up taking a different path, we now could see each of the other clues (not in the right order).

Waypoint #5

We eventually got there and attempted to reach waypoint #3 from the other side – but it was even more flooded, so we decided to just move on.



Waypoint #4

We saw a groundhog (a.k.a. a woodchuck) just outside the visitor center.

Luke pointing to WI

Wild River State Park "bock bock" card

Lessons Learned:

• Do not trust "Google Maps" or the car GPS for directions to the park.
• Look at the website beforehand to see if they are some useful directions on how to get there.

Next week we are going to get the Biome Geocache at Nerstrand and maybe Sakatah State Park.