Adventures with Marcus: Minnesota River Valley State Recreation Area

Minnesota River Valley State Recreation Area

The Minnesota River Valley State Recreation Area—it is not a State Park according to the website—is a long and thin park that spans many miles along the Minnesota River Valley between Belle Plain and Chaska. This entire park is made up of wetlands – and they are all a part of the river's flood plain. When I was growing up this was not a state park but instead was mostly private land that was flooded each year.

We decide to take a fun Friday trip down to see two parks and this was our first stop. It was actually pretty exciting to see all of the green – so far everything we have seen has been either grey or brown. It is fun to see that spring has finally occurred.

This park offers a mix of wetland, oak savannah, and tall-grass prairie. (It is technically in the prairie biome.) Since we came in late spring, we could still see some of the water from the high river but it was not super waterlogged. This state park is only about 20 miles from my childhood home and sits on the Minnesota River, so I am really familiar with this territory.

The river valley is pretty much all clay bottom, so the water does not soak in quickly at all – if there has been any moisture, I would count on getting wet feet (like we did a little just at the start of the hike).

After we parked the car and all got out, we quickly found our way to the first location. It was so easy that even Marcus found it without much help.

Marcus is getting really good at geocaching. Look at him pointing out the brochure. (Dad's little helper!)

One of the problems is that sometimes when we are at a park we have not actually gotten the park map at the entrance (aren't we confident nowadays?). That creates problems because without the map we can't see how many trails there are and what directions they go in (they bend around a lot). It is really common for a trail to start in one direction, but then take a 90 degree turn and go in a different direction. This causes problems because the GPS points in the direction of the next location – it does not take into account where trails go.

Since there was no Ranger Station here, we looked around for a map. Luke went inside the trail center and found one.

Luke's view from inside the trail center. It has electricity, a fireplace, and tables for get-togethers. All in all, a very nice shelter.

With the help of the new map we went off in search of our next location.

This trail was wet... and muddy, so Marcus got carried for a lot of it. The good news is that it improved after about the first 500 feet.

It was about 0.3 miles to the next set of coordinates – and we learned it was also the final location. When we got the bridge we laughed a bit – can you see it? I swear they did not even try to hide this one. It is chained to the tree next to the side of the bridge.