Afton State Park...

Last week we went to Afton State Park, it's the last park that Lex hadn't done the hiking club trail that Lukie and I have already done...Lukie was not ready for Lex to catch up to him on the hiking club mileage, but got over it without too much trouble...

Lukie and I didn't remember the trail beginning as a prairie trail, maybe we didn't walk that portion...

This section was short and we could see the whole thing, it was obvious to us that there wasn't any password to be found on this section...

The trail highlighted in yellow was the trail that we were hiking...

A couple of times, you get pretty close to the St. Croix river...

And this is all easy hiking, wide trails on a gravel or paved surface...

Then she found it and was caught up with Lukie and I...

Lukie and I started to remember sections that we hiked 4 years ago, like a little creek with a bridge over it...

We didn't remember the snakes...

But it was the first Monarch Butterfly we saw this year!

This picture of a snake is from when we already past it.  Lex would've literally stepped over it, Lukie almost stepped on it but moved out of the way...

I texted these snake pictures to two friends, one initially thought they were baby bull snakes, but later they agreed they were western fox snakes (they're constrictors and get grow over 5 feet in length).

But whatever about the snakes, Lex is now over the 75 mile mark in the hiking club, worthy of her own patch...

Then they said we should do some geocaching after lunch, so we did...

State parks have been open during the entire Stay at Home Order and now the Stay Safe MN Order, people were originally asked to recreate close to home (in which we wouldn't have gone to Afton), but now it's opened up some.  Even so, there was plenty of signage saying 'keep your distance.'...

Then Lukie led us (with the GPS) right into this snake...it was 2 1/2 - 3 feet long...a monster, we could've died...another western fox snake...

And following the coordinates that Lukie typed into the GPS, he led us here...

'But dad, it says it's like ten feet out there.'  How about we re-check the coordinates buddy?

You had to solve a puzzle to get the coordinates...they solved two questions incorrectly the first time...

But, after fixing the problem, we were on our way to the geocache...the only problem now was that no one wanted to stuff their hands in confined spaces after seeing those snakes...

But we got brave and got the prize...

A good day...

***And yes, we were self contained.  Full tank of gas before leaving town, brought lunch and snacks, kept more than 6 feet of space between us and other people (though we only had two separate groups totaling ~7 people come within 15 feet of us.