Thursday, May 27, 2021 More State Parks, A Three-In-One Extravaganza

The set-up: We were going to be driving out West to visit family and noticed that we’d be driving fairly close to three of the state parks we hadn’t been to yet. Should we take an extra day of traveling and check these hikes off our list? Of course!

Normally, I write my posts about these hikes right away, but we were pretty busy while traveling, so now as I look back, I have only cryptic notes and assorted photos to go on to re-construct our hiking experiences. Oh, and a little help still from my memory. It will have to do.

First up: Kilen Woods State Park, “nestled in the wooded hillsides and grassy ravines along the west bank of the Des Moines River.” It’s named after Agil Kilen, the original owner of most of the land. Just for fun, I looked him up on the internet and after exhaustive research that took about 60 seconds, I found him and can tell you that his middle name was Olaf (nice!) and his wife’s name was Helga. Don’t say I never do any research (until you read on further in this post).

We got there around 10:00 a.m., got our gear on and started out on the 2-mile hike. It was a pleasant morning, not too hot and the paths were easy to see and follow. We felt like we were nestled in the wooded hillsides, true to the pamphlet description. It’s always a pleasure to walk alongside a river, too.

There was some sort of flowering shrub that was in bloom and the smell was so sweet. It reminded me of mock orange, which has a heady, full-bodied aroma that swoops boldly into your nostrils and struts its stuff. We didn’t have our plant identifying app, so I’m not sure what it was. I am really just about the laziest writer when it comes to doing actual research. Sorry.

We did a lot of meandering up and down (to the tune of about 15 flights of stairs, according to my Health app), but it was early in the day and my knees were optimistic.

At one point we came to a bridge and found a sad collection of boards instead.

We talked briefly about whether or not we could just go down and back up again, a plan that would have appealed greatly to the 25-year-old versions of ourselves, but not so much to the 60’s versions. We opted for a slight detour that brought us to another bridge that brought us to the same place.

We saw a sign for Dinosaur Ridge that raised some expectations that sadly were not met. The view from the top was nice, though.

When we finally found the password, a few letters had fallen off; it was a little like playing Wheel of Fortune to figure out the actual word. By the end of the hike, we’d walked by a river, through wooded areas and also through prairie lands – diverse, indeed!

Lest I forget, I also managed to track down and photograph some exotic wildlife. I’m thinking that a chipmunk is probably exotic for someone, like maybe Eskimos.

We finished around 11:15 a.m. and gave a thumbs up to KWSP.

Knee score: 4-5 out of 10.

Lake Shetek State Park was next on our list, about an hour’s drive from Kilen Woods. The trail there was only one mile, easy peasy. Naturally, there is a lake there – you can figure out the name because you are smart people. The area was originally settled by the Dakota/Ojibwe people and the word “shetek” means “pelican” in the Ojibwe language. There came to be a settlement of immigrants there, but all 22 of them were killed in the U.S. Dakota War of 1862, so there’s some dark history to the place. The reason I’m giving you so much background information is that it was a short hike and I don’t have a lot of actual notes.

We started our hike at around 12:40 p.m. It turns out that Lake Shetek is the place of the headwaters of the Des Moines River which we encountered at Kilen Woods. We read something about the lake being formed by glacial moraines, which sounded like a dessert to me. “Yes, I’ll have the lemon glacial moraine, please.”

The hike was a simple walk across a causeway that led to Loon Island and then around the perimeter of the Island. Kris asked, “Do you know why it’s called a causeway?” Truly interested, I said, “No, why?” The answer: “Because.” I make a pretty good straight man for him.

We did, in fact, see some “shetek” on the lake.

We were lead to believe that we might see a great crested fly catcher on the island, but if any birds were there, they were hiding pretty well. I don’t know what one looks like, so I’ll see if I can hunt up a photo of one so you can see what we were missing.

What with one thing and another, we finished that hike around 1:15 p.m. and were ready to roll on to the last hike of the day.

Knee Score: 1 out of 10. Happy news for knees everywhere.

Our last stop on this hiking tour was Split Rock Creek State Park, about another hour’s drive. It would be our longest hike of the day, but at 2.6 miles, still very doable. The park itself is the result of a community petition in 1937 to protect a hillside filled with native prairie flowers. In 1938, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built a dam that created Split Rock Lake, thus prompting Kris to propose a motto for the park: “Best park by a dam site!” While they were at it, the WPA also built a stone bridge from local quartzite that spans Split Rock Creek. Busy little beavers, weren’t they?

We got going around 2:40 p.m. Almost right away I got into a text discussion that preoccupied me quite a bit and got me stewing over something, so I probably missed a lot. By the time you’re on your third park in the same part of the state, all the trees, water and plants start to look the same, anyway. I could stick photos in here from either of the other two hikes and you wouldn’t be the wiser. But I won’t. I really should have taken photos of the infamous Prairie Hill. But I didn’t. Failure all around.

The trail didn’t go over the WPA stone bridge, but I did get a photo of it, so at least there’s that.

The hiking trail directions weren’t as clear here and there were a couple times when we had to stop, look at the map and make sure we were still going the right direction. Up on top of Prairie Hill, we found the Well House, which was unlocked, a clear invitation to enter.

On our way down the other side of the hill, I saw this beautiful bird perched on a bird house. Amazingly, it stayed there the entire time I was fumbling with my camera and trying to move back far enough to get a shot of it. I had my long distance lens on and the bird was really close to us, so ironically, I had to keep moving back to get a good shot. I believe it’s a tree swallow, but stand ready to be corrected.

Eventually we got to the dam and walked over it. I leaned over to get a photo of the water on one side and obsessed the whole time with worries about dropping my phone. Sometimes it’s hard to be me.

We finished the hike at 3:45 and called it a day. Three more state parks in the books, and a total of 5.6 miles of hiking, bringing us up to a total of 92.2 miles since we started our Hiking Club adventure back in July of 2018.

Knee Score: 3 out of 10. Not bad.

Onward!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning unless a wizard turns me into a fly and a great crested flycatcher eats me. It could happen.

Next Hike: Buffalo River State Park