Minneopa Falls State Park

On day two of our exile, Luke/Lex and I went to Mankato to spend the day exploring a state park that is pretty familiar to us, Minneopa.  Our first stop there is usually the bison drive, you enter their habitat and drive the road looking for them.  Sometimes they're way off in the distance and sometimes they are right up by the road...

This time they were literally on the road.  How do you get a bison out of your way?  You sit there until it decides to move...

We got lots of pictures of them, though I told the kids not to make any loud noises (don't want to spark a fight with a bison)...

From the bison trail, we went for a short hike that was completely new to all of us...it's a trail to the confluence of Minneopa creek and the Minnesota river...it's hard to see in the picture, but the creek has made a lit delta at the confluence, all that eroding sandstone is getting deposited in the river...

There were also some very large prints that we admired for a while...Luke said velociraptor while I said Great Blue Heron...both technically dinosaurs...

The trail down to the confluence was pretty cool..the kids loved the sand..."it's perfect sand dad!  Where do we get some?"  I told them right there in that rock...not a good enough answer...

We also found this very cool tree growing among the Jordan Sandstone...

And yes, we went to the falls...

The falls were busy, they usually are...but we took the walk to the base of the falls too...

I had never noticed a little cave carved into the sandstone, based on moss and liverwort growth, it's been there for a longtime...which of course they kids had to crawl into...

The falls were nice, but it was cool exploring something that we hadn't seen before...

I would imagine that we'll be back to the falls sometime this fall yet...

Luke's 3 on 3 Basketball League

Luke was asked in late June if he wanted to play in a 3 on 3 basketball league.  His two best friends are playing on the team and there are two other boys (one's going into 5th grade the other into 4th).  Luke said he wanted to play because of his friends, he definitely has the least experience playing basketball out of the five, but tries hard...

Games are 20 minutes long and happen every Sunday during the month of July.  Games are at the old High School in Waconia.  He's already finished six games (I think this Sunday is his last game night), they play two games every Sunday.  There's six games going on at the same time, with music playing in the background, so the games go pretty quickly...

I haven't taken many pictures during the games, I tend to talk to parents, but here's three from yesterday...

Before the league started, Luke/Lex and I went to Safari Island 5-6 times to shoot hoops in the gym since this group doesn't practice, they just get out and play.  Because of recent lies we had a hiatus from Safari, but we went again this morning because Luke wants to get better playing and asks for some tips...or he and I will just play games against each other...I'm sure we'll be back at Safari again once or twice this week...

He likes it...he's having fun...and thats what counts...

Lex's 7th Birthday

Lex's birthday was yesterday and was she ever excited...she had been counting down daily for a couple of weeks.  She decided what she wanted to eat, what color her cake would be and what we were going to do in the afternoon...

She chose pizza for lunch...not too surprised...

The color of the cake had to be pink...we even tried to get a picture of Kieran in too...

Then it was time for presents...

She had been asking for goggles for a while now...and they're pink...

Because of the goggles, Lex decided she wanted to go swimming (she had to try them out), so we swam for almost 2 1/2 hours.  Then we went out for dinner in Chaska, watched a late movie and everyone went to bed tired...

A good day...

Frontenac State Park

After leaving Barn Bluff in Red Wing, we drove about 10 miles south to Frontenac State Park, it was a new state park for us.  We were there for the hiking club trail (2.6 miles), but I bet we spent 4-5 hours exploring all parts of the park.  It's a place we'll go back to...

We parked at the picnic area and was immediately given quite the view...an overlook over Lake Pepin...

Plus, there was a sign describing the geology behind the area...I take a lot of pictures of the kids and signs...

This one was in a pretty cool area...

From there, it was time to get walking...as Luke and Lex are trying to show you here...

It was described as a challenging hike, lots of up and downs with steep slopes and it was, but there were lots of overlooks with benches too...

On the entire trail, we saw two other people, it was pretty quiet...

Lex really liked the flowers (until she saw some spiders)...

Halfway into the hike we found what we were looking for...

And immediately sat on the bench for a while...discussing the finer points of life or not, I don't remember...

After completing the hike, I decided I wanted to go look at a rock formation.  Luke immediately looked at the map (it was a .75 mile walk one way) and did the math.  He wasn't thrilled at going another 1.5 miles, but he didn't complain either.  When Lex asked how far, Luke said 'only 10 miles.'...

The rock is called In Yan Teopa and was apparently special to the Native Americans living in the area.  In Yan Teopa translates to 'rock with opening.'

The trail to the rock was interesting, most of the trail was on top of the bluff, but three feet to the right was the 400 foot drop to the river level.  We we got close to the rock, there were a lot a switchbacks, steps and steep slopes...

But we made it and no one complained too much (or fell off the bluff)....

It was another new park for us and we added it to our passport too...

Barn Bluff, Red Wing

So Luke, Lex and I took off yesterday to do some hiking at a state park.  Our plan was to go to New Ulm or Granite Falls for the parks there, but it changed suddenly and we headed towards the Mississippi.  On the way I decided we should hike up Barn Bluff...

Pops and I had hiked up Barn Bluff almost 10 years ago and I was looking forward to hiking the 'north' trail again...it's a trail on the river side of the bluff, big drop offs...unfortunately, the trail was apparently closed in 2013 because at least 3 people have fallen to their death since 2011.  I wasn't going to go around the barricade...Lukie would have been willing, but no...

We stopped first at a local park overlooking Barn Bluff...it's like one of the hundreds of bluffs along the Mississippi from Hastings to Winona.  It's about 350 feet above the city of Red Wing.  As Glacial Lake Agassiz was catastrophically discharging through Glacial River Warren, this bluff (and most of the others) would have been an island...

And Lukie likes selfies...

Geologically, southeastern Minnesota is pretty cool as this sign describes the Red Wing area...

From there it was time to head to the bluff...

Lukie said "you mean we're going to get to stand on a rock that high?"  Not you buddy...Barn bluff has been popular for a long time...

Since the 'dangerous' trail is closed, all the remaining trails are real easy walking, you just have know you will be walking up and eventually down for a while...we headed for for the north overlook, that lets you see the river and city...

The trails are wide and mostly a limestone gravel...it's really not hard walking once you're on the top...

From the north overlook, we headed towards the south overlook...

This point used to be used every spring for people to watch for the first steamship coming up the river...

Even though the trails are wide and relatively flat on top, there are lots of signs saying 'danger of falling' to keep you on the trail...

Before we left, I took them on an out and back trail, after a little grumbling of having to walk another mile, both kids enjoyed what we got to watch (and the rest that came with it)...lots of people come to Barn Bluff to rock climb...we counted at least 30 people either climbing or getting ready to climb...

Before leaving Barn Bluff and heading to the state park, I had to get a little geology lesson going...Barn Bluff is the site of the easiest fault in the state of Minnesota to be seen...it's called the Red Wing Fault...

Basically, the buff colored sandstone on the left, dropped almost 150 feet downward to come in contact with the glauconitic (basically meaning green) sandstone on the right during some sort of an earthquake a long time ago in the past...it's stable now and has been for a long, long time...

Kieran was learning about faults last fall and we stopped to see the Douglas Fault in Superior, Wisconsin...he would've liked this one where you can walk right up to it and put your finger on the fault line...

MN State Park Hiking Club

So the kids and I have been doing the MN State Park's Hiking & Passport Club for a couple of years now.  Basically, you get a stamp at each new park you visit and record miles hiked on special hiking trails at each park.  You earn rewards (like a free night of camping) for visiting a certain number of parks.

For the hiking club, every 25 miles hiked on these marked trails earns you a patch indicating your accomplishment.  We don't generally update our total miles hiked every trip, so when we just did that the last week or so, Luke and I realized we were over 25 total miles...

So today, when we visited another new park we asked about the patch.  We had to show the rangers our log book (picture attached, though I removed the passwords for every hike).  Luke and I passed the 25 mile threshold at the end of May...

Luke couldn't be more proud of his new 25 mile patch...

We're supposed to be able to buy additional patches, but we have to call the main office first -- I want a patch for myself...

Our running miles count since joining the hiking club are:

Me/Luke -- 34.9 miles hiked in 13 parks
Lex -- 27.2 miles hiked in 10 parks (she is now eligible for a 25 mile patch)
Kieran -- 24.6 miles hiked in 9 parks

For the hiking club, you must hike the trail designated 'hiking club' and only the miles of that trail count to you're total...we have all hiked more than 35 miles in the parks these last two years...