Lake Louise State Park: In Search of the Wild Onion

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