St. Croix State Park

St. Croix State Park

(not to be confused with St. Croix Islands State Park farther down the St. Croix River!!)

St. Croix State Park is actually the largest MN state park with over 31,000 acres—this park is large and beautiful.  It looks like a great place to place to camp or canoe down the St. Croix River.  After the weekend at the cabin this was a perfect stop on the way home.

We got to St. Croix State Park in early afternoon, and it was a perfect Minnesota day.  I am happy to say no more ticks, no more mud; however, I did get my first mosquito bite of the season.

From the entrance it is a 3-mile drive to the first location.

Sandy is ready to go!

The first set of coordinates brought us right to the Interpretive Center – I LOVED this geocache – it was fun and the ranger was very imaginative.  This was a lot of fun!

The entire family got ready to hike – it was another 0.3 miles to the next location.

Luke with the old style Garmin once again.

The trail that we took was right between the campground and the river; however, it was at the top of a hill that overlooked the river.  Because it was the middle of the holiday weekend (Sunday), it was really busy and people were EVERYWHERE.

We made it to the second location and it was pretty neat (see the above GIF).

Now off to the next location.

This is what the GPS screens look like.  You can see the campground on the map view.  Normally the map view only shows roads, so when we are in the woods it is just blank.

The last leg of the Kettle River flows through this state park.  In 1994, the largest fish ever caught in Minnesota was caught in this state park (a 70-inch, 94-pound, 4-ounce lake sturgeon).  It took three hours of trying to reel it in until it was finally landed at midnight in shallow water!  Here is a link to the newspaper article: "Kettle River sturgeon sets new state record" (Askov American, Sept. 22, 1994).

We finally found where the trail left the campground and walked across a small bridge.  The geocache was there – just waiting to be found.

Ever the helpful hound is Sandy.

The classic peanut butter jar geocache.

We don't think that Sandy has a future as a geocache search and rescue dog – he just wants to run!

Since we had no reason to hurry home, we decided to spend a bit of time hiking in this park.  

Sandy helping pull the stroller uphill.

Here is the geocache card.  I love this one!

Here is a not-so-funny ending to the story.  Luke and Marcus went into the interpretive center while I put the stroller back on the bike rack.  The interpretive center was really neat; it had lots to see including a aquarium full of turtles – Marcus loved that.

So back to the story... Sandy was in the car and it was running with the A/C on.  I got the rack on for the stroller and went to grab something from inside the car and then realized that I had somehow LOCKED the running car... YIKES!  I ran inside and asked Luke if he had his keys, and the answer was no.  I was getting really nervous now and got the number for a local roadside assistance group.  I went out to start calling them when Luke realized that the trunk was unlocked!!!!  So crisis averted... we were able to get in and did not need to get help.  We also figured out what happened: a set of keys was still in the stroller, and when I put it on the rack I hit the button that locked the car... Yikes!  Lesson learned for the future.