Banning State Park

President's Day weekend, the kids and I took off on a day trip to a new state park for them, Banning State Park.  The last time I had been there was at least 15 years ago, it's halfway to Duluth, just north of Hinckley.  It's a great park focusing on an old sandstone quarry along the Kettle river.  We went north looking to avoid as much mud as possible (it had been around 60 degrees for five days), and though we found some mud, we found some snow too...

It was awesome hiking in a winter hat and gloves (maybe), without the heavy jacket.  Any slope facing south was free of snow and generally dry...

The river had opened up too...

When we hike, the boys are generally out in the front...

They talk so much and so loud, we don't wonder much why we don't see animals...though we saw lots of woodpeckers and other birds that day (I told Lex we'd never sneak up on a deer...more on that later)...

Lex is generally going her pace at the back...

I'm in the middle somewhere trying to get the boys to slow down or just walking with Lex...

The old sandstone quarries are pretty cool...

The boys were standing in front of one in the picture above...though it's hard to see the quarry with all the trees, we had to walk in a bit to see the quarry...

We had two goals for the day --- complete the hiking club trail and see a new waterfall along the way (Wolf Creek Falls)...but we found a trail we just had to take...

Any trail called Deadman Trail is one we're going to take, plus it only detoured us 3/4 of a mile or so...eventually we got to the still frozen waterfall...

Turns out we could go under the falls themselves...so we had to...

We are pretty curious what these falls would look like in the summer...

We could walk all around the waterfall because of the creek being frozen...

On the way back, we had some tired legs so we went looking for a place to sit down...we found one just Lex's size...

But while walking back...the boys were talking just as loud as they normally do, we they passed at least three deer no more than 50 yards to their left...once they got stopped and turned around the boys came back to see what Lex and I were looking at...

From there, it was time to complete the hiking club trail back through the old quarries...Kieran really likes reading the interpretive signs...

We found a nice frozen feature alongside one of the quarry walls...

The sandstone was used for many buildings in the metro area and beyond...

In case you were curious about what a fresh surface of the sandstone looks like...

We found the password we were looking for, of course it's covered in the picture...

From there, we went on completing the hike along the river, which included a couple of stops...

And more signs to read....

And a group picture...

It was a busy day...take a look at Luke's and my fitness trackers...they indicate 24,000 (mine) and 17,000 (Luke's) steps, though I had run six miles before we left...a busy day for all...

Just like any first trip to a park, we finished the day with the usual pictures --- the stamp book was stamped and the kids in front of the park sign...

Another great day outside with these three kids...