Tallgrass Aspen Parkland Biome
– Lake Bronson, MN –
We finally made it to our FIRST BIOME geocache. This occurs when you get all of the cards in a given biome. I know that this was pretty easy because the tallgrass prairie biome only has two state parks, but it is nice to finally get one of these biome geocaches out of the way (in less than 24 hours, no less!).
Luke and Marcus stayed back at the campsite and played while I went to get the information on the Biome Challange (Marcus really needed the downtime). For each biome there is a questionaire that needs to be answered to find the coordinates to the geocache.
Once I got back to the campsite, we laid out the two cards and started work at figuring out the answers. Some of them are gimmes because they are so easy – some are challenging.
After a few moments of work, we thought we got the right information and off we went to find the geocache. The actual coordinates were on the other side of the park, so we put Marcus in the car and we headed for it.
Within 0.5 miles Marcus was already ASLEEP!—he was going to miss the excitement of his first biome :) and one parent was going to have to stay in the car with him.
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| Camping requires a lot of resting up. So does a late night party... |
The GPS coordinates brought us to the visitor center on the other side of the park.
It was really nice, and Marcus would have loved to explore the inside – there were some interesting animals and lots of information – also the nicest state park bathrooms I have ever seen—on a road trip like this, much appreciated.
For the first shift Luke went in search of the final location and I stayed in the car. Our initial coordinates where weird because they put us right in the middle of a small woods by the parking lot. I had read some of the logs, and they said it was right off the trail... While Luke was out in search, I read back on the logs for the past year to see if I could pick up anything useful. This resulted in changing one of the answers (digits) from an 8 to a 7, and that slightly moved the marker on the GPS (moved it like 12 feet), but nothing else jumped out at us. I could tell that a LOT of the other geocachers had some problems with the questions, and quite a few actually had to ask a ranger for some help.
It was hard not to be impressed by the view in this part of the park.
After a while Luke came back to the car, and we discussed our dilemma – I told Luke about the change, but it just didn't move the target enough to help. Now I decided to go out with the newly-updated coordinates. In the meanwhile Luke would redo answering all of the questions and see if he got a different result.
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| Luke's Work |
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| Vonnie's Work |
I did a quick loop, and like Luke, did not have any luck. The good news is that, back in the car, Luke had a few ideas on things that may have been wrong. We talked about it and came to agreement on one change to the coordinates. That change moved it enough to give us a clear idea of where it was really at.
This moved the spot even closer to us – see the rock on the right side of the kiosk – it was tucked right behind it.
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| Luke writing in the log! |
Well this took us a lot longer than expected, but how exciting to have one biome down—only three to go!
On the way out of the park we stopped by the dam again to take in a final view. What a great park (they didn't call it the "second Itasca" for no reason) – we will be going back!
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