Fort Snelling State Park

The kids didn't have school on Friday and the weather wasn't that bad, so the four of us took off to Fort Snelling State Park for a little hiking.  We were going to hike the trail that goes around Pike Island, it is a 3 mile trail, plus another half mile or so to get to the island.  I bet we hiked a minimum of four miles that day.

Kieran really enjoys reading signs or interpretive centers, Luke can usually get the gist of the sign before one of us reads it to him.  Here there learning about why there is a large Minnesota river valley, why there's a Mississippi river gorge up until St. Anthony falls and why there are a series of waterfalls in the area.

But mostly our hikes end up something like this...both boys acquire sticks to be used occasionally as walking sticks, but more often than not, as guns...

And any bench we find?  Luke will immediately call for a rest...

If they can find a large stump to climb on, even better...

I'm the one who makes them stand at places like this - a marker showing past flood years on the rivers...

All along the Minnesota river side of the island we saw lots of evidence of beavers.  So we had lots of talks beavers and 'beaver marks' as Kieran called them.  Luke wanted to see a beaver, Lex wanted to pet one...

At the halfway point of the hike we came to the sign that we look for as part of the hiking club.  It gives us the password that we need to record.  Every 25 miles we get a patch, as of right now, we've hiked over 15 miles of trails as part of the hiking club.  (No, we not going to show you the password)...

We spent a lot of time here (there were at least 3 benches) exploring the confluence of the Minnesota river and the Mississippi river...

I visited the area the day before, taking a walk on a path overlooking the confluence of the rivers from the Minnesota side.  It's pretty hard to miss the Minnesota, being filled with sediment from upstream.  The Mississippi has much less sediment.  Lake Pepin downstream is being filled in by the sediment coming from the Minnesota.  Studies have repeatedly showed that the filling in of Lake Pepin has accelerated after Europeans came to the area.  The cause is all the fields that are tiled, as water is quickly drained from the fields, it's taken to the Minnesota river valley and quickly erodes the valley walls itself.  That sediment heads straight for the river.

On the Mississippi river side, there are lots of large trees with cavities you can walk into.  I posted a few last August too...

Back at the visitor center, we finally found the beaver, well Lex did and she couldn't even pet it...

A pretty decent, and tiring day...