Mille Lacs Kathio State Park

Kathio State Park

The adventure today is a first –  it is not just the three of us on the road (as it usually has been).  This time we are bringing Sandy ("The Dog") along as well.  So the four of us were off for a big day.

We got everyone and all of our stuff piled into the car and were out the door around 10:45 am.  Sandy got the trunk to himself, Marcus and all of the stuff in the back seat, and Luke and I in the front.  A pretty full car!

About 1.5 hours after leaving home we arrived at Mille Lacs Kathio State Park (Marcus and Sandy napped on thew way).  This park is almost right on Mille Lacs Lake (across the road next to the lake), but most of the park is away from the lake on the south side.  This park is somewhat close to where Luke grew up (great cross country skiing), but I have not been there a lot.

We got to the park, and we quickly found the way to the first location.

Cache # 1

                                                                                                     
If you have been avidly reading our blog you have probably noticed already, but it is fairly common for the first geocache location to be right at the rangers station at the park entrance.  It is pretty much always a gimme and easy to find.  The nice thing about this is that normally only one of use gets out of the car to explore it and see how far the next destination is... this is important because Marcus melts down when he is taken in and out of the car too often.  In this case the next location was over 3 miles away – so I jumped back in the car and off we went.

We quickly moved onward to finding the second cache.  We found the a good parking lot, and we all got ready to hike.  At this point I had Sandy and Luke had Marcus.  Sandy, as usual after a long car ride, pulled very hard on his leash because he had so much energy making walking him pretty difficult.  The good news is that he did eventually ease up and slowed down.  On the other hand, Marcus did the opposite: at the beginning of a hike he is easier and only gets a bit tougher to move along with him when he is tired and he wants to be carried. We decided not to bring the stroller for this first geocache stop of the day.

Second Cache Location

When I was searching for this second cache there was another guy looking for it as well.  The conversation was a non-starter as he clearly did not walk to talk... it is so funny – most of the goecachers we try to talk with are quite conversational and friendly.  This guy was not at all talkative and seemed very serious.  We pretty much ended up following him for the rest of the trip to this cache.

The view following Sandy dog

 I have to admit that I made a mistake at this point – I just looked at my GPS wrong... we didn't go horribly wrong but we did go about 0.2 miles out of the way. Once we got back on track, Sandy and I went ahead while Luke and Marcus fell a bit behind.  Sandy had quite a pace (and a good pull).

This park is really pretty and it is definitely in the deep woods biome.  The distance between the second and third caches was enough to actually allow for a bit of a hike and the chance to see some of the park.  We did have to be a bit careful because there was a LOT of water and mud on the ground.

After a bit of a hike we found the third and final cache.  I LOVED this one.   They really raised the level on the bird theme!

We got our "bock bock" cards and started back.

One of my favorite views.

One of the cool things about Mille Lacs Kathio is that is has a 100-foot high fire tower that can be climbed, and you can look far off into the distance.  We all walked up to the chain link fence around it, but quickly decided that only Luke would go up to the top.  Marcus is a climber, but we decided it was safest for Marcus and I stay on the ground (though he started climbing the bottom steps immediately like he wasn't planning on stopping!).  Here are some awesome views to share (and a lot of stairs).

There

Gusset plates.  Cheaper than a weld.  (... 35W bridge come to mind, anyone?)

Like parasailing, it is strangely quiet at the top of the fire tower.

The trees look almost fake, like a set.

Awesome late afternoon shadows.

Mille Lacs Lake from the fire tower.

No shortage of the usual graffiti at the top.

It was a pretty cool park and is worth going back to.

If you were ever interested in what the iPhone geocaching.org app looks like.  Here we are following the orange arrow for 0.2 miles to oour destination on the iPhone screen.  You can see the actual destination in the lower right corner.

It doesn't look exactly like this on the Garmin GPS, but it is close enough.

And Finally – Here is THE CARD.