Moose Lake State Park

Moose Lake State Park

Moose Lake State Park was our second stop of the day.  On top of being a state park, it is also home to the Minnesota Agate and Geological Interpretive center.  This is a building with 4,500 square feet full of pretty agates.  It also had a big moose that Marcus was a huge fan of.

Nice moose.

While Luke and Marcus visited the Agate Center, I found the first two goecache locations.

The second location on this geocache was really close – like 150 feet – it was just across the parking lot, so I quickly grabbed these coordinates as well.

I ran inside the building an grabbed Luke and Marcus, and we headed off to the 3rd location.  This park is kind of weird, and we had to walk across a big road to get to the path for the 3rd location.

It started off as a really nice walk through the woods... until we reached... MORE MUD!!!!  Luke decided to turn around, and so the rest of us kept moving forward – this time with Sandy and Marcus.  I have to be honest, that was not the best idea... imagine this... pushing a stroller through mud that is several inches deep while being pulled in a different direction by the dog.  I swear I almost lost a shoe in the mud.

It took a while – I think it was 200–300 feet of mud, and we finally found it.  I was bummed it was another clue and not the final cache!

I put the coordinates in and learned it was another 0.3 miles to the final location, and I looked ahead.  All I saw was a path full of muddy fun and that seemed endless to me.  I decided to turn around and headed back to the car.  I texted Luke while going back defeated!

Marcus, Sandy, and I got back to the car – I know this picture does not show it well, but if you look at it you can see the mud on my feet, my pants, and the stroller...

Although I was defeated, Luke was determined to succeed.  He put on his boots, programmed his old-style yellow Garmin GPS (we both carry one – mine is my iPhone with the geocache app) with the final coordinates and decided to take the path on the other side of the lake, hoping to miss out on the mud.

It didn't take long before Luke found the final cache!  There was not quite as much mud on the other side of the lake.  Luke looked at the map, and I guess the part of the path I went down was by the beaver dam and was prone to flooding.

Here is the geocache card and various items in the ammo box.