In 2014 when we completed the MN State Park Avian Adventure Geocache, we drove over 8000 miles across Minnesota. We crossed the state in a lot of different ways during that adventure but we did managed to leave a few stones unturned and some places unseen, primarily because in order to hit all of the parks we didn't have the luxury of too many side trips. Luke used a map and tracked everywhere we went and we realized that we visited almost every county in the state. I am going to leave part of this open because their may be one additional county we have to visit but we knew we missed Lincoln county, out in SW MN. This county is remote and pretty unpopulated- less than 6,000 in the entire county (12 people per sq mile). Anyway, this past Sunday we made our way to that unvisited county.
We drove down early on Sunday morning (it was about 180 miles) to reach this county. I didn't take pictures of (Luke did) but you will have trust we made it. We looked online and their really were not any scenic areas out to see but we didn't drive by the courthouse made of Kasota Limestone.
Once we drove through town we turned our sites towards Pipestone National Monument, which was only about another 25 miles south (the next county down).
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I don't remember ever going to pipestone National as a child (that doesn't mean I never went) and it was a wonderful place to visit. You could really feel spring, everything is ready to bloom! Marcus and Sandy dog were so ready to be out of the car after the long drive. We walked in to check out the visitor center and we were very happy to learn that it was National Parks week and therefore FREE. That seemed pretty lucky to us! After talking to the ranger for a while we learned a bit of the history (really interesting, check out the website), we went back to the car and grabbed Sandy. We all sat down and had a little lunch and then we were off t hike.
Here are a few pictures from our hike. This place was amazing, so beautiful. We will need to go back in summer, although I can't imagine it looking much prettier.
There are two main trails, we took the one that went by the falls.
The rocks are really colorful, the pictures don't do them justice.
In the picture below I am pointing out the colors in the rock.
Marcus and Sandy were quite a handful while hiking. A lot of the time Luke had one and I had the other. Especially when we were at the top of the rocks.
This is Winnewissa Falls
A little bit of history about Nicollet
One of the funny thing things that happened on this trip is Marcus learned how to pose for pictures. He really wanted Luke to take this picture and was posing for it.
Final comment, if you haven't been to this park I recommend it, it was worth the drive!
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