Fortified by our repast in Leroy, we were ready for our next hike at Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park near Preston, Minnesota. The trail here would be slightly longer: 2 miles. We could tell right away that we were in a rather more touristy place when we got there. More cars, more people, more attractions. The park boasts of having an equestrian camp, an actual Mystery Cave (which we didn’t make it to this time) and Historic Forestville (“Experience a historic Minnesota valley and town site with a rich history…”). This is a happening place!

The hiking club trail started by the amphitheater and as we walked by it, we could see that some fun show was about to start, but we pressed on with our regularly scheduled hike. Nose to the grindstone and all that (or, as Wodehouse would say, “nttg and all that”).

Many of the flowers were the same as those we’d seen at Lake Louise, so I didn’t feel the need to capture them again. Mostly. Okay, I took a few more photos – who can resist?

There was definitely a sense that the horse/non-horse divide at this park was important. No sooner would you see a “No Horses” sign for one trail, when you’d see horses nearby, probably a little disgruntled at the open discrimination. Their riders kept them in check, however.

Moving along after seeing a group of horses, we found the Ford of Bruinen (it doesn’t take much for us to transport ourselves into Middle Earth). We even saw the waters looking like the heads of stampeding horses and could almost hear the elvish words “Noro lim, noro lim” being uttered to bring them forth. If you can’t see them, look harder – they’re there!

We also passed several patches of these delicate white wildflowers, prompting Kris to muse that it was like seeing a field of elanor flowers of Loth Lorien. I happened to be reading in that section of LOTR later and alas, the elanor flowers are yellow, but I think we could be justified in saying that they were instead the “pale niphredil” of Loth Lorien.

We kept running into small clumps of horseback riders – one of them would invariably say “howdy,” as they ambled past. I’m convinced that merely being on a horse necessitates the use of the word “howdy,” when greeting people. In fact, research would probably show that the word “howdy” didn’t exist until the first person clambered onto a horse way back when.

One set of riders asked if we were bird watchers – the temptation was great to claim special bird knowledge, but we didn’t. “We just saw a beautiful red bird with black wings, and we were wondering what it was,” one man told us. We could not provide these friendly Iowans with the proper answer, but afterwards, I wished I had just said “It’s probably a scarlet tanager,” even though I had no idea what one looks like. I looked it up later – that’s exactly what it was.

We were on the lookout for this red bird after that, but the horse-back-riding Iowans must have scared them all away.

Kris got hungry and stopped for a little chaw on a fallen tree – he was feeling very beaverish at the time.

This prompts the following poem:

When your husband is feeling hungry,
And seems a little feverish,
Show him a fallen tree trunk,
He may just be feeling beaverish.

At some point the trail began going uphill and the happy, carefree portion of our hike ended (for me, anyway). Two-thirds of the way uphill, I paused to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my brow, so we both took a five-minute break. It seemed like a good time for our snack, too – Kind bars from Leroy. I guess you could say they were Kind of good. Please laugh at that.

The hike ended soon after that and we decided to go on to Old Forestville to take a look around. When we got there, we found out that you had to pay money to take the tour. I look at that kind of proposition and say, “Why?” Kris looks at it and says, “Why not?” So off we went.

It turned out you could just wander around for free, but if you wanted to enter any of the buildings, you had to pay for the tour. We opted out and spent some time in the nice and cool gift shop where I found a charming old book (republished) called Vitology. I’m guessing it had originally been published in the 1800’s. In the very first chapter, the learned author was touting the benefits of married couples having separate bedrooms. The argument went something like this: If you have pastries in front of you all the time, you get tired of them, but if the pastries are removed from your sight, they have a greater appeal. Oh brother! It was quite diverting (if I can use the language of Jane Austen here, which seems appropriate). I wanted to read the next chapter, but we had to go and I wasn’t committed to the point of buying it.

So there you have it – 2 more miles down and our total is now up to 24.4 miles – only 0.6 miles away from earning the coveted 25-mile patch!

Hey, I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

Next Hike: Carley State Park

We’re on the trail again after a break for winter and more winter, and a spring that sometimes seemed an awful lot like winter. On a nice spring day at the end of May, we headed off to our first stop: Lake Louise State Park in southern Minnesota, near the small town of Leroy. It was sunny, 70 degrees, and little white poofy clouds meandered lazily across a picture-perfect blue sky. I didn’t actually TAKE a picture, but you get the idea.

We were talking to one of our sons on the phone when we arrived at the park and he had been telling us about the Godzilla movie that he was planning to see. This discussion inadvertently leached into our perceptions of the park, as you shall see.

I had this fun idea of trying to get a picture of me kissing Kris on the cheek at the park sign, except of course it was just the two of us taking photos, so we had to take the two photos separately and hope that our photography wizard would be up to the task. He was. He put a bunch of photos together nicely for us (thanks, Rich!).

The hike at Lake Louise would be short, a nice break-in hike after our hiatus: 1.3 miles. The hiking guidebook told us that we could expect to see “an array of wildflowers – including the nodding wild onion…” Well! If the prospect of seeing a wild onion wasn’t enough, the prospect of seeing a nodding one bumped up the excitement level. Lake Louise itself looks like a river. In fact, if you look at a map (and we did), it seems to be a mere widening of the water between Little Iowa River and Upper Iowa River. Who decides whether or not a body of water is a lake?

Our progress at the beginning of the hike was somewhat slow, hampered by my insistence on stopping to take photos of all the flowers. I plan to go the extra mile for you by actually looking up the flowers to identify them.

We realized we wouldn’t know a nodding wild onion if it nodded to us and said hello, but figured since we are well acquainted with the domesticated variety, how different could it be?

Early on, we came across this tree that had been toppled by a storm, but the first thing that came to my mind was: Godzilla has been here. Once you have monsters on the brain, it’s hard to shake. Better by far to remember the powerful voice of the LORD:

The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
Psalm 29:4-5

As usual, I kept my eyes open for wildlife and ended up capturing quite an interesting assortment of fauna, starting with real things and then delving into the fanciful. To start out with, here’s a fellow traveler:

And here we have about a million frogs. Can’t see them? We couldn’t either, but we could sure hear them – quite the froggy chorus was going on:

When we passed this stagnant pool, we both thought of the Creature from the Black Lagoon (monsters again). Could he be lurking just below the surface? Who could forget that scene from the movie in which the beautiful damsel is swimming and the creature is swimming in eerie symmetry under her in the water below…

And last, but not least, here we have two playful otters poking their heads above the water. Imagination is a wonderful companion on a walk through the woods:

So, the burning question on all your minds is this: did we find the wild onion? And was it nodding? I managed to get a really good photo of the wildest onion in the woods, swinging along on a hanging branch just like Tarzan:

INTERMISSION

By now we were feeling a bit peckish and decided to stop in tiny Leroy for some grub. I love small towns – it’s like stepping into Mayberry no matter where you are. We stopped in at a BP convenience store and while making our purchase, exchanged the usual greetings with the teenager at the cash register. Upon being told to have a great day, he said, “It would be a lot better if I didn’t have to work.” “Ah, but then you wouldn’t be making any money,” I countered, feeling it my duty to impart some wisdom and perspective to a fellow clearly in need of some. To his credit, he cheerfully granted my point. We found the city park, sat at a picnic table, and ate our victuals to the sounds of lawn mowers and children playing on the playground equipment. ‘Twas perfect.

Total number of Hiking Club Hikes: 10. Total number of miles: 22.4 Next stop: Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park. I’ll probably delete this in the morning…

Next Hike: Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park