Crow Wing State Park

Crow Wing State Park

Crow Wing State Park is at the confluence of the Crow Wing River and the Mississippi River.  It is still in the Big Wood Biome, so there are a lot of trees.  One of the cool things about Crow Wing is that it has the remains of a logging town that was there in the 1800s and has long since been abandoned.

The pine trees looked very dark off in the background in this picture.  This was the drive into the park.  Very pretty mixture of grasses and pines.

We drove into the park, but did not stop in this time at the Ranger Station because the first set of GPS coordinates was not there.

We drove into the park and found the first location very quickly.  At the first location there were actually clues for two different geocaches: the State Park Avian Geocache and a Historical Mystery Tour multi-cache.  We actually ended up doing them both in the end.  They were both listed on the same sign so that made it a bit confusing to start with.

Luke entering the coordinates at the parking lot.

Vonnie waiting on Luke – not so patiently!

And we were off to the second location.  We followed a really scenic path right next to the Crow Wing River.  It led to a wooden boardwalk.  This was where the old town of Crow Wing was located.  There were signs telling the story of the town.

Historical signs all along the boardwalk that ran along, what used to be, downtown Crow Wing.  Very neat idea.

So this is where I made my mistake – I could see the above box from really far away.  I even stopped, looking at my GPS.  I figured, "Heck, the last couple only had two locations.  Why not this one?"  Then I got there – and I was confused because it did not look like an Avian Geocache.  It took me a while, but I eventually figured out this was actually a part of the other geocache series (oops!).  I quickly looked down at my GPS and got back on track.

I walked just a bit farther down the boardwalk and found the second location.  This one was not in very good shape – and instead of one clue, we got two!   Goecaching.org has thought of everything – when you run into a problem with a geocache you file a maintenance report to get it fixed (we tried to stop in the office on our way out, but it was already closed).

The good news is that we were able to get the directions to the third location.

Now off the boardwalk and into the woods we went....

The scenic northwoods look of the park mixed with some prairie.  Scenic.

The white house pictured below is believed to be the oldest existing frame style house built in Minnesota that is north of the Twin Cities.  

There was a nice platform to rest on – and the third location.

Looking at the GPS, we were not far from the fourth and final location (tongue twister there).

So we found the final cache and got our "bock bock" card.  You can see the box looks exactly like the one I mistook before – it is easy to see how that happens!

It was time to turn around.  We were not in a huge hurry, so Luke suggested we take the long way around the loop to get back and see a bit more the park.  I was worried that it would be flooded out since the water was really high.  We made it almost the entire way, but the last 200 feet or so was under water and we had to backtrack.  This would not have been so bad, but I really needed to find the restroom at this point!

On the positive, because we did this extra walking, we did get the rest of the History Geocaches (there were six total in this series).

The red is the path we took and were forced to turn back on.

Lots of water!  The banks were overrun with water.

But don't worry, avid readers, we took home our "Bock Bock" card for Marcus.

The tree swallow.  Very regal-looking here.

What we have done so far:

     * 9 trips

     * 19 parks (averaging 2.1 per trip)

     * 1541.5 estimated miles

     * 43 estimated hours

     * 1 ton of treats

     * 1 puking incident

     * more fun and laughs than can be counted

Here is what our state park geocache map currently looks like – smiley face means we completed that cache.  We are nicely completing the middle of the state.

All of the avian geocaches are marked on the map (orange ones are those yet to be done).