Monday, July 12, 2021 William O’Brien State Park:

The 2021 Hiking Club season continues! We have been wanting to conquer the four state parks up on the St. Croix River: William O’Brien (WOB), Interstate, Wild River and St. Croix. We made tentative plans to hike Interstate on an afternoon, camp at WOB that night and tackle the 6-mile hike at WOB early the next morning. The afternoon we chose turned out to have a high of 95 degrees. No thank you! So we scrapped the hike at Interstate, but went on to camp at WOB that evening because the next day was going to be cooler.

We had a nice campsite at WOB. Our next-door neighbors had a cute little boy who threw a few loud temper tantrums, but he settled down nicely at mid-evening and it appeared all systems were “go” for a good night’s sleep (you can detect the ominous foreshadowing in those words, can’t you?).

Well, we never heard another peep from the little boy, but a woman at a campsite near to ours decided that 11:00 p.m. was a perfect time for a nice long gab with someone on the phone and she did not keep her voice down either. Kris had dropped off already, so I was the only one being kept awake. Every once in a while, she’d say, “Well, I should get going now…” and I’d think “At last! She’s getting off the phone!” But it turned out to be a Minnesota goodbye and the conversation continued.

Finally, I got up and stalked over there and said, “Could you PLEASE keep it quiet?!” Ha ha – of course I did no such thing. I entertained the idea quite a few times, but I could never see it ending well, so I tried to ignore our chatty camper (unsuccessfully). Eventually, her prelude to saying goodbye actually came to fruition and the phone conversation ended. Ahh…sweet silence. For about 2 minutes. And then she struck up a loud conversation with a fellow camper. As Charlie Brown would say, “AUGHHHHH!” I’m not one to suffer in silence, am I? I’m finding a strange pleasure in making you go through this with me. Even Chatty Camper couldn’t keep it up all night and I managed to get some sleep after all.

William O’Brien was what used to be called a “lumber baron,” which I think just means he was in the lumber business and not the one of the ones laboring at cutting down trees. When the lumber companies had cut down most of the white pines in the area, he bought up a lot of that land for his personal estate. In 1945, his daughter Alice donated 180 acres along the riverfront to the state and that became WOB State Park. That’s enough of the history lesson. On with the hike.

The hike description contained the words “a spectacular view of the St. Croix River Valley [is] your reward for making it to the top of the hill,” which I took to be a sign that my hiking poles would be required equipment on this hike. Our weather apps told us that some rain might be coming mid-morning, so we set a goal of leaving at 6:30 a.m. and made it onto the trail by 6:50. Not bad.

I had brought my camera, but forgot the harness so I decided to leave the camera behind and just use my phone for taking photos. I was 30% sad about that and 70% glad not to have to carry the camera on such a long hike in humid weather where we might encounter rain.

The hiking club trail at WOB was wide and well-groomed for the whole six miles, so they get a big thumbs up for that. Also, they had very good signage, another feature that not all parks share.

In spite of the cool 69 degrees, it was an extra special kind of humid that morning, the kind that feels like an invisible heaviness in the air. We started off at a pretty fast pace, motivated in part by the desire not to get caught in a downpour. The other motivation was the devil nipping at our heels in the form of some kind of flies that kept up a steady swarm around us. Kris was inspired to make up a Latin-like name for them: flyus annoyus. They seemed particularly interested in the back of Kris’s sweaty neck, so he took to calling them “sweat flies.” After one bit me on the hand, I broke down and gave myself a little DEET shower to keep them away. Kris took longer to break down, but he got there eventually. When we stopped to get a good look at them we realized they were deer flies, which no doubt were with the mosquitos on Satan’s back as he entered the Garden of Eden.

But enough about that! We went through a wetlands area, followed by trails surrounded by hardwoods, and eventually got to the prairie lands on a loop trail that led us to the top of Wedge Hill where we could indeed be rewarded with a little sit-down to enjoy the view. I took some notes for this post and also took advantage of the moment to throw some water on my sweaty face.

There was a fair amount of up and down while coming down the hill and finishing the loop. I took a short break to catch my breath.

Shortly after we got off the loop, it started to rain, but not heavily. It felt good, actually.

We saw a lot of bluebird houses, most of which were facing the fields. At some point, we began seeing them facing the trail instead. These were undoubtedly for the more extroverted birds, who could be counted upon (when home) to come out and chat us up a bit, while encouraging us along the way (“not much longer now!”). None of them were home, unfortunately.

We were back in the wetlands now and saw evidence that beavers were amongst us. Not long after that, we saw their lodge, an architectural masterpiece. The architects did not make an appearance.

When we saw the visitor center, we knew we were close to the end.

That’s where the hike normally starts and ends, but our campsite was very near the trail, so we just started from there. I saw a map at the visitor center that claimed that the Hiking Club trail was only 5.3 miles instead of the 6 miles that it says in our Hiking Club book. Perhaps that’s true, but I wrote 6 miles in the book. I won’t tell if you won’t tell.

The hiking poles performed well.

Knee score: 7 out of 10. Long hike, nice trails, but a fair amount of up and down. My phone says it was the equivalent of 14 flights of stairs.

I should mention that WOB has a nice swimming beach on Lake Alice, should you decide you want to make a trip there. Bring your swimming suit!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, wishing that deer flies weren’t a part of this world.

Next hike: Interstate State Park