Coniferous Biome: Savanna Portage State Park

Coniferous Biome

Savanna Portage State Park

—McGregor, MN—

How did the town of McGregor, MN, get a Scottish name...?  Well, the Chamber of Commerce section of the town's website has an article about the history of McGregor and the etymology of the town's name.  Here is a snippet:

"How McGregor came to be called 'McGregor' has always been a bit of a puzzle, even in the minds of long-time locals. Just for fun, let's have one more look at what we think we know about good old 'gregor...." —Robert O. Harder, McGregor Area Chamber of Commerce website

I love it.  It's a puzzle even to the people who have lived a long time in "Old 'Gregor."  Really piques the curiosity, doesn't it?

Anyway—back to geocaching.  We finished the regular Savanna Portage state park geocache (previous blog) and headed over to the starting point (whose coordinates are already given to you when you enter the park) for the Coniferous Biome Geocache that was also at Savanna Portage.

When we were at the Ranger Station, we had grabbed the clue sheet for the biome; however, we also already knew something: that even if we solved it the coordinates would only bring us to the starting point that we were already given... pretty pointless.  In all of the other biomes (and the final avian geocache), the starting coordinates brought you to the place where the clue sheet was posted not the first point of the multicache.  I had read about this one beforehand, so to be honest, we didn't bother to do it.  We have all of the cards anyway, so we could, but we didn't.

The first location for the biome geocache was completely across the park (about three miles away) from the regular avian geocache at Savanna Portage, so we got in the car and headed over that way.  This is actually a really big park (see the map on the right), so it took us a bit of time to cross it, even in a car.

A colonnade of trees in fall colors lining our way forward.

When we got there, we had a bit of a fun surprise (or at least Marcus thought so); the parking lot was right next to a playground!  Since we had spent most of the day cooped up in the car driving across the state, Marcus was pretty excited to see it.

"What is over there?" me wonders.

In addition to have a really cute park, the view was pretty amazing.  We played for a few moments, and then we were off to find our FINAL biome geocache.  There are a lot of pictures on this post, but it was one of the prettiest hikes we have done all year.

Loon Lake.

We did a short hike by the lake and saw some crazy guys in the water... it was way too cold for that!  But we also found the first stop of the biome multicache.

We were really impressed with the nice location markers at all of the stops in Savanna Portage State Park.  We entered the coordinates into our GPSs and headed off!

The trail we took followed along the lake.  It was great!  We could see lots of fall colors as we went around.

Busy beaver!  We've seen his handiwork a couple of places around the lake.

Loon Lake is almost like a pond and has lots of little coves where people took there boats out to fish on this fine afternoon.

Eventually, we turned off the trail and headed into the woods to find the geocache.  This was a quick one... only two stops!

We had to go off-trail a little ways to get to the final stop.

Marcus examining his box full of loot.

"What have we got here?"

The final biome card!

This is the last card we needed to get in order to find the final avian goecache.  To say that I was ecstatic would not be overstating it.  We were all really happy.  Marcus and I headed back to the car while Luke hiked the rest of the way around the lake and met us back at the car.

Here are some final views of the Loon Lake.

(There were actually lots of boaters on this lake, but none in frame in any of these photos.)

All in all a wonderful little tucked-away state park.  High up in the hills and the deep woods with plenty of lakes.