Thursday, June 10, 2021 Glendalough State Park: Wretched Caterpillars and Dragonflies

Glendalough State Park is in west central Minnesota near the town of Battle Lake and has a 3.3 mile Hiking Club hike around Annie Battle Lake. As a curious person, you no doubt have a couple questions starting out: what does “Glendalough” mean and who is the Annie of Annie Battle Lake? Rest assured, I have you covered on these important questions. “Glendalough” means “the glen between two lakes” and was named by Minneapolis Tribune owner F.E. Murphy and his wife, who were of Irish descent (the original Glendalough is a valley in Ireland). When the Tribune owned the property they hosted VIP’s like President Richard Nixon and President Dwight Eisenhower.

I like the word “Glendalough” mostly because I say it like “Glenda-loo,” which makes me happy. Unfortunately, the correct pronunciation is either “Glenda-low” or “Glenda-loch” (like Loch Lomond). As to the matter of Annie, of Annie Battle Lake, I spoke too soon. I thought this would be an easy thing to track down, but as far as I can tell, Annie’s story has been lost to time. I do know that the town of Battle Lake was named after a battle at a nearby lake in the 18th century between the Ojibwe and Souix Indians. Is it too much to presume that the site of the battle was Annie Battle Lake? Well, two paragraphs in and I haven’t even started the hike, but you have been made richer in knowledge, so I think it was worth the digression.

We didn’t start our hike at Glendalough until around 2:00 p.m., having gone to church in Moorhead with our friends who live near there. We arrived at the park around 1:30 but had a picnic first, just the two of us…and a host of wretched caterpillars (which shall henceforth be known as WC’s). They seemed to appear out of nowhere and were crawling over everything (you may assume a little exaggeration on my part, but not much). I picked a couple off my plate and when I was done eating, I stood up, realized I’d sat one one, too. *shudder*. Nothing like hiking with squashed caterpillar on your jeans.

Once again, I left my trusty hiking poles behind, feeling confident that there wouldn’t be a lot of up and down at this park. My confidence was not misplaced. The initial part of the hike veered away from the lake, but we knew that we’d be getting back to it about halfway through.

It was a warm, sunny afternoon and we were seeing loads and loads of dragonflies. I was on the hunt to get a good photo of one, but my, they are a flighty insect. They would rarely alight on something and then only for a fraction of a second. Here’s my favorite shot of one, even though it’s mostly grass and very little dragonfly.

Kris also espied one on the ground and it was so well camouflaged, it took me forever to find it.

We also saw what I’m pretty sure was a dung beetle, pushing his large dung ball across the path. There’s so much that goes on in the tiny world of insects that is completely amazing.

We were tooling along quite well when Kris noticed his sunglasses were missing. We backtracked quite a ways, couldn’t find them, turned around and then he spotted them very near to where we’d first turned around. I just kept taking photos and tried not to think about what this was adding to our total mileage that we wouldn’t get credit for, but that my legs would certainly notice.

Occasionally we entered areas that were WC territory. They were all over the leaves on certain trees and when we stopped to look at them, we began to notice a curious sort of sound like when you pour milk on your Rice Krispies: snap, crackle, pop, pop, pop… We realized suddenly that it was the sound of caterpillars dropping from the trees onto the ground…or onto us. It began to feel like a very sinister place and certainly a place where you would keep your mouth closed just in case. Me no likee. Kris asked me at one point, “Why did the caterpillar cross the road?” My answer: “To get squashed.” No further answer was needed.

Much of the path at this point was paved and it was popular with bikers. Indeed, the park seemed like a popular recreation destination by the number of people we saw down by the beach and the fullness of the parking lot where the trail started.

It was nice to get off the bike path eventually and resume our relatively isolated walk. I was musing about the fact that I’ve been getting a few WordPress bloggers randomly following my blog lately, which initially was rather encouraging. But the notifications of this are always accompanied by the phrase “So and so thinks your blog is pretty awesome! Why don’t you check out so-and-so’s blog and follow it!” I suspect that these bloggers don’t really think my blog is awesome and probably haven’t even read it, but are just trying to get more followers themselves. I feel jaded now.

At one point, we passed a small creek on our left and I snuck a photo of this merry band of canoeists. If you were in that canoe, would you be upset if a complete stranger posted this photo on their blog? Just curious.

We saw an eagle high above us. We wanted it to come closer so to entice it our way, we tried a couple things. First of all, I called out, “Gandalf has need of you!” This didn’t work, so Kris suggested we try making the sound of distressed bunnies. Not knowing exactly what distressed bunnies sound like, we did our best, making high-pitched squeaking noises. This was completely ineffectual, but quite amusing, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Loved seeing the sign “Yurts ahead.” How often in your life will you get warnings about impending yurt appearances? Not very often, so treasure it when it happens.

The lake was a nice sight to have on our side as we hiked along the last half of the trail. We saw an assortment of people on the lake in their kayaks and canoes, and as we got closer to the end, plenty of hikers with their dogs. Glendalough is a happenin’ place!

At the end, we noticed that there’s a miniature model of the lodge up on a pole. We thought at first it must be a bird house, but Kris didn’t see any holes for potential birdie residents, so it must just be up high to keep mischief makers and hooligans away from it.

There are 68 total hikes in the Hiking Club booklet and Glendalough was our 34th, so we’re at the halfway mark!

Knee score: 3 out of 10 (with 10 being the most difficult)

Next hike: Lake Carlos State Park

I’ll probably delete this, or maybe you will, or maybe it will be eaten by wretched caterpillars. Anything could happen.