August 20-21, 2012
So we abandoned the kid with Lee’s parents and went off to Maplewood State Park for ~24 hours.
The Summer Trails map has contour lines, which made for good
practice for me (Lee is a fabulous navigator. Me, not so much.)
The ranger asked if we wanted a long or short hike to camp,
and when we did not surprise her by asking for long, she parked us about a mile
from the Cow Lake site we’d reserved. So we took a few minutes to plot the best
route from car to campsite, which ended up being about 5.5 miles. Much better.
First we walked around Beers Lake. Some of the sumac was
starting to turn red. I really miss that about MN. Much of the trail was dual
use horse and hike. So we had to watch our step, which was occasionally
annoying. I reminded myself that this way both groups got more trail, which was
much better. It obviously wasn’t heavily used by horses, either.
The day couldn’t have been nicer. The lakes were bright blue
mirrors. I saw several dozen frogs. Lee saw none. She claims I was making them
up.
The trail wound through forest and grasslands, with some
rolling hills. We had to walk along dirt park roads, but even those skirted the
lakes. The first day we saw no traffic, and the second day we saw the same
ranger truck three times.
All the lakes had a ring of dead trees sticking up around
the edges. We learned later that the water levels have been rising in the area
for the past few decades.
We stopped for lunch on a shady rise overlooking a prairie
area. It was beautiful. As we were
finishing up, I heard voices and horses. I’ve been told by riders that horses
are freaked out by backpacks, so I was glad we already had our packs off. I
shouted a hello and waved so we didn’t surprise them. The horses stopped. “Hi,
can you just chat with us for a while? He’s really skittish.” … So I talk about
the weather, because what else can I come up with on short notice to discuss
with a stranger I can’t even see? And yup, that is a skittish horse! It took a
while for it to even start moving up the hill again, and was barely on the trail
as they went past.
