Crow Wing State Park

Last weekend wasn't just about waterslides and waterparks...even though it was most of the weekend...we also hit up a new state park for the kids, Crow Wing State Park.

It's a nice park along the Mississippi that documents a battle site between the Dakota and Ojibwe in 1768 or thereabouts and the village site of Crow Wing, which was a major route along wagon trails leading from St. Paul to the Red River Valley in the 1850s and 60s (the village failed shortly after the Union Pacific crossed the river at Brainerd, the city of Brainerd took off and Crow Wing died).

Up first for the afternoon was the battle site...Lukie's request...we were looking for remnants of Ojibwe rifle pits that they had dug to use as breastworks against the Dakota.  The Dakota had earlier attacked the Ojibwe village, with Ojibwe warriors absent, and taken the women captive.  The Dakota were expected to return using the river, so the pits were dug...

Lukie and Lex agreed for a picture...

But Lukie wanted a picture of just him...

We eventually got to the site of the rifle pits, but it was a hard picture to show scale with all the leaves down...but the Ojibwe won the battle, it was one of the many battles between the tribes that eventually pushed the Dakota out of the woodlands and onto the prairie of southwestern Minnesota...

Like Lukie does whenever we hike, he finds a stick or two to carry...

From there, it was time to start the hiking club trail...

It was a couple of miles hiking and we found the password and we took the usual picture, but this time it had to be taken separately...

The password was at a nice overlook on the Mississippi, it would have been very colorful a week or two earlier...

And that's when Lukie said he wanted a picture with me...Lex, the camera gal was up...

Of course, then Lex wanted a picture with me...

And since we were busy taking pictures...I wanted a picture of the two of them...

Whenever we hike, we're always looking for things that are interesting, like this tree...

Or this frog that we found (it was about 40 degrees and misting, the dude should be ready for winter) and helped off the trail...

After a couple of hours of cold and light rain, we were done...back to the hotel for warm water...it was a busy day...