Adventures with Marcus: October 2014

McCarthy Beach State Park

—Side Lake, MN—

McCarthy Beach State Park is kind of in the middle of Nowhere, Minnesota. We almost made it to this park earlier in the summer when we hit Scenic State Park in Big Fork, MN (we were about 30 miles away), but we ran out of time. This means that today's visit to the state park was a must, and we had to get the park out of the way. I had never heard of this park before, and I had pretty low expectations for it going in. Boy, was I in for an good surprise!
"The sandy beach on Sturgeon Lake was rated one of the top 17 beaches in North America by Highway’s Magazine. Walk along the half-mile of shoreline, or venture out into the shallow water that extends hundreds of feet into the lake."—Minnesota DNR

Marcus slept the majority of the way to the park and woke up right when we arrived (perfect timing!). At first, this park is pretty quaint, and you can't see the lake when you drive in and park. We got to the park right around 2 pm, and it was pretty busy still. Luke ran into to say hello to the park ranger and grab a park map. It didn't take long, and we were in search of the McCarthy Beach geocache.

We crossed the road and found a parking lot. It was actually pretty busy – there were a LOT of teens playing some kind of game in the parking lot. It was both noisy and funny. We quickly found our way to the first cache. This was a first: it was a laminated paper sheet attached to a tree with twine. This park was going to give us a few more firsts...

We entered the coordinates for the next stage and started walking. We didn't have to go very far... actually just across the parking lot and a little ways down a short flight of stairs towards the lake.

When you drive into the park, it is kind of unassuming, and it just looks like you are in the woods; however, the beauty of this park is in the lakes that surround it. As we walked toward the second location, we got closer to the lake, and we could see it through the trees ahead of us.

Our first view of the lake in the distance. It fits your ideal of a summery Minnesota lake complete with beach!

The second location was an easy find. It was another piece of paper, laminated (or taped) to a piece of wood, and chained to a tree... these coordinates weren't going anywhere!

A good dad workout: "Let's jump onto the table again... one, two, three..."

We entered the next location and headed off. This direction brought us right onto the shore of Sturgeon Lake and a bit up the shoreline. We decided to walk along the shore to check out the lake. It was an almost perfect fall day... the last vestiges of summer.

Marcus loved walking along the beach. He even stopped a few times to pick up some branches both to walk with and to throw.

The beach was busy... it had boats, and swimmers (too cold for me), and lots of people and dogs playing in the sand.

When we got to the far side of the swimming beach, we found the third clue. It was a laminated piece of paper tied to a branch with a piece of twine.

"There is so much to do around here."

Marcus LOVED the boat! "BOAT!" he says every time he sees one. Whenever he is up close to one, he wants to play on it. In this case, the boat was for emergency use only for the swimmers on the beach.

The new set of coordinates brought us back into the woods a little ways for a short hike (still right by the beach though).

It wasn't far before we came a very suspicious looking log.

"Let's do the jumping game again!"

What could it be...?!

Hmmm... what is hiding here... Why, it is another Bock- Bock card box!

Your trusty old ammo box. I think every final state park geocache has been in this same kind of box.

When I grabbed the box from the log, I noticed a huge spider hanging out there and felt a small sting. I didn't think much of it until my finger started to get a bit swollen.

See the wolf spider at the bottom of the mountain maple leaf?

The good news is that it didn't last long... can you see him in the pictures above and below? (I am just assuming that it was a male spider.)

Check out the spider. Good camoflage. Nasty disposition, though.

Swollen finger... never had a guard for a geocache box before!! Kind of ups the ante on these challenges, I must say...

We got the bird card (the golden-crowned kinglet) and headed on our way... still one more state park to visit today!

Here are some nice views of the park and the Sturgeon Lake. What a nice place to visit.

A nice view of the lake.

Mommy and Marcus in front of the changing house.

What a great view of the lake—funnily enough, the dog in the pictures had just broken his leash and was running away while his family chased after him. It kind of cracked me up. He was fast and ran like there was no tomorrow!

Soudan Underground Mine State Park

—Soudan, MN—

Let me just start by saying... this is a really fun park. It is fun if you are an adult, and it is fun if you are a toddler. Lots to see and lots to play with. I have visited a few times (often on the way back from the Boundary Waters through the and still think it is a lot of fun.

Marcus looking at the open pit – it is one of the deepest and
is fenced off for obvious reasons. The man-made gorge
on the other sideis enormous!

When we planned the trip to this part of the state, we purposely made sure to plan our visit to allow us to get in one of the underground mine tours. The last time Luke and I were at the mine was in 2011 returning from the Boundary Waters, and there was a fire earlier in the year. The fire caused substantial damage, so the mine was closed for tours during that summer, and we couldn't go. So this was a pretty big deal to us, and we couldn't wait to see what Marcus thought of it.

The mine is in Soudan, MN, up on the Vermillion Iron Range just a mile east of Tower, MN, along Highway 1. We have already visited the other Minnesota iron ranges on earlier geocaching trips, like Cuyuna Country State Rec Area on the Cuyuna Range (no surprise with that name!) and Hill-Annex Mine State Park on the Mesabi Range.

This time we are way up in the Vermillion Iron Range near Lake Vermillion and the Boundary Waters.

We got to the mine pretty early. We had looked online and learned that there were two types of tours: the regular historical underground mine tour and the physics lab mine tour. Luke was really psyched about the physics tour, but that tour only goes once a day, and it is first come first serve. Here is a description of it from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota: "The Soudan Underground Laboratory is a general-purpose science facility, which provides the deep underground environment required by a variety of sensitive experiments. The Lab currently hosts two large projects: MINOS, which investigates elusive and poorly understood particles called neutrinos; and CDMS II, a 'dark-matter' experiment which may help explain how galaxies are formed. Both were built for basic research - exploring how the universe works - but similar efforts have spawned practical (if unforeseen) byproducts, including the world-wide web and even advanced medical imaging techniques."

For more information about the lab and what is does, check out the U of M website:
University of Minnesota Physics Lab Website

The good news is that we got there early enough to get tickets. Since we had a bit of time, we got to walk around the mine area and check out the sites and old equipment they have outside.

This may have been the favorite part of Marcus's day. He LOVED the gigantic mine equipment and everything else around here.

We walked around the grounds and checked everything out. There were some really neat things to check out. I think that Marcus wants to be a miner when he grows up.

In the Land of Giants!

We also used this time to knockout the Lake Vermillion State Park goecache—that post went up yesterday. Lake Vermillion State Park is adjacent to Soudan Mine, so it was convenient to take care of the Lake Vermillion geocache before the mine tour started (see the previous blog).

When I finally walked back from Lake Vermillion geocache, it was time to go on the underground tour! (Luke and Marcus already came back so that they could enjoy everything at Soudan Mine.)

We met with our tour group in the visitor center and got all ready to go. This means that we had to put on yellow hard hats, or in Marcus's case, a kid's bike helmet. I was actually pretty shocked that he didn't complain very much about having to wear it since he usually objects to wearing his bike helmet at home. I think it worked because he reads his book about Bizzy Bear and construction work almost every day, and more recently, he insists that we wear hard hats while reading the book... anyway, I digress...

Once we were appropriately attired (we also put our coats on for the coldish temperature), we headed over to the double-decker elevator that would bring us down into the mine. We watched the people in our group load into the the first (bottom) part of the elevator, and then after it lowered about ten feet, we were loaded into the second (top) part... with 10 of our new very close buddies in the elevator car! There is hardly any extra space, and this would not be a great place to be claustrophobic. Marcus was not a really big fan of the elevator at first, but he didn't cry at all and was more mystified than anything by the ride down, which was really fast. I think the entire group liked having him along!

A few minutes later we reached our destination, a half mile under the surface and Marcus was happy to walk around once we got off. There was water dripping from the ceiling every few seconds, and he thought that was really neat!

At first Marcus was not very sure of the mine... it was dark and kind of barren, but as soon as they brought our group towards the lab, he was much happier. We were really glad that we were doing the lab tour and not the historical tour since that would be all tunnels in the mine – not sure how much he would have liked it. The physics lab, by contrast, reminds one of a big warehouse or a factory, so you feel like you are just inside a large building and not in a narrow tunnel deep underground. This was totally okay with Marcus after we left the tunnel where the elevator stops.

The first area you walk into is a large room where they talk about the lab before actually going inside.

They finally let us go in, and we got to see the lab. It was really cool. The neutrino target was huge and kind of looked like the en of the time machine tunnel from Timecop.

When we finished the tour (which was really good), we went back up to ground level. Marcus was very happy to get to run around and play outside again. Overall it was a great experience, and he did great on his first mine tour (he actually did a cave tour when he was a year old in Wisconsin).

When the tour was over we still had one huge thing left... the Avian Adventure goecache, of course!! Can't forget that!

The tour finished at 1 pm—it actually started at noon (Marcus's usual naptime), so Marcus was getting hungry, crabby, and tired. We got him in the car and started lunch. He basically passed out in the 10 minutes it took us to drive to the beginning of the geocache, which was back down the hill and up a side road that went between the two state parks (hey, we were just here earlier!). This meant that I stayed in the car with Marcus, and Luke ran through this geocache. Here are the pictures from his quick geocaching through Soudan Mine State Park:

The trail from the street at the bottom of the hill (actually heading back toward the base of the hill under the Visitor Center where we just were!).

Just off the path in the woods. The first set of coordinates found!

You can tell this was done by the same park ranger as the geocache at Lake Vermillion – doesn't it all look familiar from the last blog? After the first locatio along the trail, he kept jogging toward just below where the Visitor Center is. There were some great views of the mine from the bottom of the hill along the way, including the train tracks that ran parallel to the trail Luke was on.

Yup, that's the mine up there!

How they used to load the trains with iron ore.

Believe it or not, there actually was the "Nettling Nuisance" (a.k.a. Poison Ivy) growing up through tracks and here and there. You wouldn't think it by looking at this picture!

Found it! Second location done.

The second geocache container was tucked right between the beams of the train trestle itself. Now onto the next location, which was straight up the hill to where we were earlier.