Friday, November 19, 2021 Lake Maria State Park: Blanding Turtles and Horse Hockey

Our hike at Lake Maria State Park may well have been the last one for the year 2021. We chose the last Saturday in October to wend our way up there for the 2-mile hike. We picked up a third party for this hike: Kris’s brother Karl. This meant, of course, that Karl would now be privy to all of the secrets of the Hiking Club – the hand shake, the password, the official HC snack food, hiking tricks of the trade, everything – and all without even joining the club. He didn’t say it explicitly, but we’re thinking this had to have been a lifetime achievement for him, probably way up there on the bucket list.

The hike got off to an inauspicious start. I had just replaced the camera that had been stolen and the kit I got came with some filters. It seemed reasonable to put one of them on my 70-300 lens to help protect it, but it didn’t screw on right and then I couldn’t get it off. We dithered with that for awhile and then we just decided to put the lens hood on. I say “we,” because this had become more or less a committee of three – I welcomed the input. Having put the lens hood on, we took off and I hadn’t taken more than 10 steps when my new camera on its maiden voyage fell onto the asphalt! It turns out I hadn’t secured the straps correctly. Arghhh! Please join me in a moment of anguish. But wait – not only did the lens hood protect the lens, but when the hood came off upon impact, that stupid filter came off with it. So, all’s well that ends well. I tried to get back to some sort of mental equilibrium while Kris and Karl made sure the camera strap was correctly installed. Deep breath. Okay, now we’re ready.

We stopped off at the trail center first.

I took a photo of a random turtle statue outside of it and later found out that it is a Blandings Turtle. Never heard of it? Well, gather around, children, and I shall teach you things you have hitherto not known about this remarkable creature. The BT looks like a normal turtle, but it has super powers in the sense that it doesn’t show any signs of aging over the years. That’s right! This hardy little turtle is capable of reproduction into eight or nine decades of life. No wonder they made a statue of it! And it’s considered endangered, so there’s that, too.

Inside the trail center, we found a display of watercolors done by a local woman named Lotus Williams. She was born in 1889 and spent most of her life in Minnesota. She didn’t start painting until she was 50 years old, thus disproving the old adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Who came up with that, anyway? Must have been a young person. While we were admiring her paintings, we chatted up a couple people in the building who turned out to be members of the Friends of Lake Maria group. They pronounced it “Mah-rye-ah,” so maybe we should, too.

All this and we haven’t even stepped foot on the the trail yet. We started off on this beautiful day, along with a fair number of people with their dogs. We also noticed some signs that horses had been on the trail, so it became important to pay attention to the path as we walked. There were some jokes made about whether we were on the “Dog Poop Path” or the “Horse Hockey Trail.” If you ignored both the junk and the jokes, it was a delightful path. Really it was!

As we walked along, we were treated to a nearly constant shower of falling leaves. I tried to get a really artsy photo of the phenomenon, but it’s harder than you might think. The topic came up about the origin of the word “fall” to describe the season. For some reason, I have a memory of Kris thinking that Shakespeare was involved. I looked it up (research credit, please) and although nobody mentioned Shakespeare, the consensus was that the word “autumn” began to be used in the 1300’s and the word “fall” came about in the 1500’s. Draw whatever conclusions from that what you will. I say this:

When leaves start to sprawl,
It’s definitely fall.
When the flowers start to ping,
You can call it spring.
When bees begin to hummer
We’ve entered summer
And when sun on snow glinters
These are what we call winters.

But nobody asked me. I took a bunch of photos along the way as usual. The horse piles seemed to be fairly fresh. You didn’t have to be a tracker like Aragorn to sense that we might be seeing horses soon. We came to Bjorkland Lake and came across a pretty little scene with several people on horses. They’re such beautiful animals that all feelings of disgruntlement about their calling cards faded away. Bless the beasts!

They left and we sat down at a picnic table to have a little repast of homemade Clif bars. Karl suggested that they could be called Klynn bars. Why not?

The lake was looking very lake-ish.

Also, I took a photo of a couple lone leaves at the tippy top of a tree that had otherwise been completely denuded of its foliage. I trained my camera on it for a few minutes thinking one of them could let go at any time and then I’d get this epic photo of a leaf just beginning its descent. I underestimated its grip on the branch.

Onward we went. More photos.

Kris had found an app that allowed us to keep track of where we were on the trail to make sure we were where we were supposed to be. In spite of that, we went astray and had to backtrack. Oh well. On a lovely fall morning, this was not a big hardship.

Oh, by the way, again I waited too long to write this. I had a note from the hike: “natural toilet paper,” but the context now eludes me. No doubt it was some clever observation by one of the men, so maybe they can comment on this blog and let me (us) know. I really need to quit writing such cryptic notes.

It took us about an hour and a half to complete the hike, but this includes all the time we spent putzing at the trail center.

Knee Score: 3 out of 10. Fairly level with a couple up and down areas.
Total Miles: 120.3 out of 192

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, but I’d better watch where I step afterward.

Next hike: St. Croix State Park