State Parks...

The forecast for yesterday was for a temperature between 45-50 degrees...Lukie had said earlier in the week he wanted to go hiking at a state park and get the hiking club trail.  We decided that Flandrau State Park would be a good park to visit, we had camped there once before, but that pre-dated us getting the passport or hiking club...

We left early in the morning to get to New Ulm, but we unfortunately found out all of their trails (except for a very few) were groomed for skiing and we could not hike on...even the 'hiking club trail' was not open for hiking...to make it even worse, Schell's Brewery was holding Bock Fest right outside the park and we were told that one of the trails we could go on would probably have people wandering randomly through the woods from the Brewery...

Well, we were there, so we went hiking...

We found a pretty nice overlook above the Cottonwood River...

Of course we found a bench to rest on...

But the guy in the office was right, we found 3-4 large groups of people that were somewhere between partially and/or heavily drunk (by 11:00 am) wandering the woods looking for a 'Bock' and we decided to bail...we did get the passport stamped (#20), but couldn't hike the hiking club trail...

To salvage the day, we headed to Minneopa for some bison and waterfalls...the bison road was closed due to road conditions, but luckily the bison were pretty close to the fence...

From there, it was off to the waterfall...

Frozen waterfalls are just as cool as the unfrozen kind and Lukie/Lex loved it too...

After seeing the falls from the top, Lukie decided we 'had to' go to the bottom...we essentially skated down the stairs, it was pretty fun for all of us and made it to the bottom pretty quick.  We got to the falls by walking on the frozen creek...

In non-frozen times, we can't be on this side of the rock, both Lukie/Lex said that to me without me asking...

Lex was impressed with how much ice there was (you could see a little bit of the creek flowing behind the ice)...

Lukie went straight up to it...

And Lex had to follow...

They then decided they had to 'touch' the waterfall...

After quite awhile in the gorge, we decided to leave...

It was not easy going up the stairs to get out...but we made it without injury...

Once we got to the top, we noticed the sign...oh well, too late...

It was a fun day, even though we didn't expect to go to Minneopa...

When we got back to town, we rested (I did anyways) for 20 minutes and then were off to Safari Island to swim and enjoy the wibit (which will be the next post probably)...