Thursday, November 16, 2023 Savanna Portage State Park: One More Hike, My Johnny

Notes from a hike in September.

At last, the penultimate hike of our Hiking Club Adventures! We camped at Savanna Portage State Park in anticipation of doing the 5.3 mile hike in the morning. The park was surprisingly crowded with other campers and we realized that it’s been a while since we were camping on a weekend. Two young couples were camping right next to our site and they had a dog. I had a gloomy premonition of these young ‘uns making a lot of noise late into the night, followed by the dog’s incessant barking. Wrong on all counts, I’m glad to say. Remind me of this the next time you hear me uttering a gloomy premonition. Nip it, nip it, nip it!!

We had quite a bit of rain overnight and the forecast for the day was more of the same, so we decided to wear our rain gear for the hike and I left my big camera behind. With the length of the hike, using both hiking poles seemed prudent; Kris decided to use the extra pole. We took off from our tent site around 9:15 a.m., 61 degrees and overcast, which is actually nice hiking weather.

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The early part of the hike took us up the Continental Divide Trail (the pamphlet described it this way: “…as it rises and falls for over two miles.” I was just a titch concerned about that.) Further up and further in! The trail was wide and mostly grassy, lots easier to walk on than the hike we’d just done at Bear Head State Park.

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With all that uphill exertion, we both got hot pretty quickly. Kris shucked his raincoat early on, but I waited until later just in case my bare arms might be a magnet for any mosquitos still remaining.

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When we got near the top of the Continental Divide Trail, we stopped off at Wolf Lake Overlook for a breather and to read the signs. We learned that Savanna Portage is so named because it is at this juncture that Lake Superior and the Mississippi River watersheds come closest together and there was a 6-mile canoe portage that went from one to the other. First the portage was used by Native Americans and later on by European settlers, fur traders, voyageurs, etc. Thinking about a 6-mile portage carrying canoes and gear made me exceedingly thankful to be hiking without carrying anything.

The Hiking Club hike is essentially a triangle of three trails with a sharp left turn from the top of the Continental Divide Trail onto the Old Schoolhouse Trail. We were getting a little giddy with the thought that we only have one more hike after this. Kris began singing, adapting the words to an old sea shanty:

One more hike, my Johnny, one more hike
Oh rock and roll me over, one more hike.

Why don’t we have hiking shanties? The definition of a shanty is thus: “A song with a boisterous chorus, sung by sailors while heaving at the capstan or windlass or hoisting up heavy weights, to enable them to pull or heave together in time with the song.” I guess that answers that question, but begs another one: what should we call hiking songs? Trekkies? Huffy Puffies? Walkies?

The sun came out briefly along the Old Schoolhouse Trail. You know what song goes with that, don’t you? “Here comes the sun….here comes the sun…and I say, ‘it’s all right.’” A nod to the Beatles for that. A whole generation of us can’t help singing it when the sun comes out after a dreary absence – it’s practically Pavlovian at this point.

By the time we’d taken the final left turn onto the Anderson Road Trail, it was just starting to rain lightly. It was so humid that the rain felt good. We spent most of our time on that trail talking about making all of these hiking blog posts into a book. I don’t have any illusions about anybody wanting to actually publish these in book form, but there are some websites that are designed to help you make your own one-and-done book from blog posts. I’ll be looking into that. Here’s a working title for the book: “A Wimp’s Guide to Hiking Minnesota’s State Parks.” Thoughts? Suggestions?

The autumn colors made for some beautiful avenues along the way, and there were some orderly stands of tall pines that stood as an army of sentinels along the last part of the trail. I like to think that they were saluting us for finishing the hike.

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One more hike, my Johnny…

Knee Score: 6 or 7 out of 10. The hiking poles were very helpful on this hike.

Next hike: Maplewood State Park

I’m carrying this post on a portage in the morning.