Minneopa State Park

Minneopa State Park

After leaving Minnesota Valley State Recreation Area, we made our way down to Mankato with two plans:

           1.  We were going to complete the Minneopa State Park Geocache.

           2.  We had the opportunity to visit with some friends who live extremely close to it.

We got to Dave and Kate's a bit later than we wanted, and so we decided to hit the park right away.  This time we actually had a few friends with as well: Dave and his daughter Tess came along.  

Minneopa is really pretty state park about 30 minutes from my home town and I have been there plenty of times (I think I actually went there on a few dates as well).  It has a very pretty waterfall and some nice trails.  One really humorous thing about this geocache is that if you only visited the park and completed the geocache you may not even know about the waterfall – because the geocache locations are NOWHERE near it.

We followed the GPS to first location, and we could tell from some distance that it was going to be on a sign – nice and easy.

While we were checking out the first location a guy randomly came over and started talking to Luke.  They were banding birds on the other side of the parking lot and asked if Marcus wanted to release one.  We went over and watched it and, wow!, I was impressed.  Luke has seen a lot of things like this in his life, but I think this was the first time for me.  He wanted to know if Marcus wanted to release a bird after banding it, but instead we decided Dave's daughter could release it (Marcus is still a bit too little to do it!).

Group banding birds.

Do you see the little birdie head in his hand?

They are looking up the bird here...

Marcus looking on with a LOT of interest.  He has never really been this up-close-and-personal!

They completed banding the first bird and Tess actually held it until it flew away (it sat there for a minute before deciding to fly away!).  What a COOL experience for all of us.

Now that we completed this adventure it was time to get back to tracking down our next bock back card.  

Dave and Tess on the path

It was about 0.3 miles, and we found our way to the second location.  Once again we did not have a map with (reminder to self – either get a map or take a picture of map in the future), so I made a mistake and we backtracked to see the map – just to find out we had to got back to the second location again.  It didn't add a ton, but probably did add an extra half mile to our hike.

I finally took a picture of the map so we would have it for the rest of the hike.  LESSON OF THE DAY: Always get the map!!

Tess standing on the rock.

One of the true things we saw on this hike at right.  This is a massive rock that was split when a tree grew through it (one of many like it in this park) –- shows what a lot of persistence can do!!

Now were were back in search of the 3rd location.  Tess decided that she did not want to walk through the mud again, so we hung out by the rock while we turned back.

It was a pretty hike – about another 0.3 miles – for most of it the walk overlooked the Minnesota River Valley and it was beautiful.  

The green was just starting to really come out and we could see pretty far.  Once all of the leaves grow out the view will not be quite as visible.

We quickly found the third and final location.

This is a fairly common final cache location – can you see the ammo box?

"Bock Bock."

Look at the view.

Dave looking over the river valley.

Marcus admiring all of the rocks-  he LOVES rocks and stood on as many as he could.

We put everything away and headed back to the car.  One of the things that slowed us down was Marcus – he LOVES rocks and wanted to stop and visit and touch each one.  It was awfully cute!

Time to hike back.  On the right was a controlled burn area we think.

Overall a successful trip – we made our goal of getting the geocache and got the chance to hang out with friends and eat some really yummy food.  Dave and Kate have a son, Mark, who is 8 months older than Marcus, and watching the two of them play together was precious.  The highlight was the end of the night when they gave each other good night hugs – melt my heart!  

We did fail at one thing – Luke and Marcus never got to see the falls.  I guess that means we will have to take a trip back again.