Pro Tip: Don’t go to the Lake Vermillion State Park entrance for this hike. Follow the signs for the Soudan Mine Tour, which you will not be taking. Pro Tip: Save some energy for the last quarter mile of the hike. Oh, and the Hiking Club booklet will tell you that this is a 2.5 mile hike, a bald-faced lie. One of the first signs you see tells it like it is: 2.9 miles. So who cares about four-tenths of a mile? Yours truly.
The drive up to the Soudan Mine was beautiful: blue skies smilin’ at me, nothin’ but blue skies do I see. (If you don’t hear Willie Nelson’s reedy nasally twang singing those words, you’ve missed the boat somewhere in life, and I’m not sure how you can make up for it at this point. Get some help.) All along the way we were seeing the fiery reds and yellows of trees here and there starting to turn. We stopped in Virginia for a picnic lunch at Olcott Park. Right after we sat down, an albino squirrel came over and posed for photos. I’ve never seen one before – have you?
It was a charming park, complete with conservatory, water fountain, full playground area, picnic tables, ball park and concession stands and a couple tree stumps that had been carved into monkeys and bears. Bonus points for the cemetery right next to the park.
We got to the location of the hike around 1:30 and it was 80 degrees. Pro Tip: These are not ideal hiking conditions for people who identify as Wimpy. We aren’t ruled by Pro Tips, however, so we set off with cheerful hearts in spite of the fact that I forgot my knee huggers and had decided to skip the hiking poles, too. I must have thought I was young again.
I found an old friend right away: Mr. Blue Aster. He’s the kind of flower that’s the last to leave the party when fall weather comes strolling along, way after all the others have gone to bed yawning.
We talked about other questions we wished we’d asked when we were in the visitor center and decided that to avoid more socializing we’d just look up the information on our phones. This prompted me to wax philosophical about how being able to look things up instead of talking to people was impoverishing us. At least that’s what I meant to say. Instead, I said “Using our phones impovers…impovers? No, that’s not right.” Kris supplied the word “impoverishes” and I mourned the impovering of my vocabulary as I get older.
The fall foliage provided a lot of eye candy, so much so that I couldn’t stop taking photographs. This was akin to the dewy spider webs that entranced me so much on a previous hike. I showed amazing restraint though, in that I only took about 20 photos of fall leaves instead of the 2 million that I wanted to take.
If you’ve read a lot of my hiking blog posts, you’ll have noted that Lord of the Rings references creep in on a regular basis, usually provided by that good husband of mine. I said, “Hey, you haven’t used a Lord of the Rings reference lately,” to which he replied, “Yes I did – I just told you the other day that (so-and-so) sounded just like Bilbo Baggins.” I had to tell him that didn’t count – it had to be while we were hiking. Immediately after this, we spotted some leaves that I observed looked like they’d been touched by Sauron. The obligatory LOTR reference portion of this post has been completed.
We were really warming up quite a bit as we walked the hilly trails, but it was hard to get too distraught because brilliant red leaves were everywhere. I decided to make a meme. One must keep one’s mind gainfully occupied while hiking. You can decide whether or not my mind was gainfully occupied or just wasting valuable brain cells.
The signs, they are a changin’. (If you don’t hear Bob Dylan’s rough and ready voice singing that line even though I changed one of the words, see above about getting some help. Hearing the Simon and Garfunkel version is an acceptable substitute.) Yes, there’s a new design on the horizon for the hiking club signs, The old one with its hiker silhouette is being upgraded to a hiking shoe. I don’t know – is it an upgrade? What do you think? Kris said he thought the old drawing looked like something my Dad would have drawn. He’s right!
Kris noticed that as we walked along, we were seeing lots of stones on the trail, but the black ones all seemed to have moisture on them. A mystery to ponder, that. I saw a sordid mess on the ground that turned out to be a mushroom that was past its glory days, but it could just as well have been carnage from the old “blood in tooth in claw” motif of the wilderness.
There were lots of red-striated rocks along the way. We assumed the red layers were iron, but found out later that they were actually jasper. Interesting!
We finally came back to the road that would lead us to our car, the last one-quarter mile of the hike. It was all uphill in the blazing sun and I had to stop a few times just to give my pounding heart a moment to catch up. I couldn’t help but think of Needlenose Ned in the movie “Groundhog Day” telling Phil Connors to watch that last step (into a deep puddle) – “It’s a doozy!” So here’s my warning to you: Watch that last quarter mile – it’s a DOOZY!
It took us about 90 minutes to do the hike. We went back to the visitor center to use the bathrooms and to ask the staff some more questions. She was very knowledgable and added a lot to our understanding of the Iron Range region of Minnesota. Here’s a few things she told us:
The Soudan area began to be mined for iron in 1882, going underground in 1889. In 1963 the mine was closed. The type of iron there was “hematite,” whereas other areas held “taconite,” from which it’s cheaper to extract the iron. Over 70% of the iron used for making steel comes from Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range region.
Knee Score: 7 out of 10. Lots of up and down and at the end, lots of up. By the way, according to the Strava app, my top speed during this hike was over 9 miles per hour. Dear friends, this is the first time I’ve had reason to doubt Strava. I cannot think of any time during this hike in which I was loping along at 9 miles per hour.
Three more hikes to go!
Next hike: Bear Head State Park
I’ll let this post drop like an autumn leaf in the morning.
Lynniebeemuseoday 
Wow! Look at you two! Only three more hikes left! How many have you done?
Your words of warning are appreciated! Beautiful photos! My knee hurts just thinking about your hike, but you did it without brace or hiking poles! You go, girl! 🙂
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We are all finished with our state park hikes! I just haven’t posted about the other three yet, but hopefully will get those out in the next few days. Woo hoo!
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