Exploring Minnesota: Hiking, Rock Climbing, Seeing....falls????

We are NOT camping people.  Oh, there are a lot of things about the camping experience we enjoy like cooking and eating over a campfire, hiking, enjoying time together as a family, sitting around the campfire talking and singing, and enjoying the world God created. There are several parts of camping though that we don't enjoy like hiking to the bathroom, setting up camp, living out of a suitcase in the cramped space of a tent, sleeping outdoors, disassembling camp.  Since we have no camping gear and do not wish to invest in such things for the little bit it would be used, we do not camp.

This fall I had the urge to do those camping things we enjoy so I was inspired to put together a day of camping.  My thought was that we would get up and head out, enjoy a day in nature cooking out and eating outside, hiking, exploring, etc... but come home for the sleeping part.  I asked some of our new friends for a good place to do this and the first thing we heard was "Taylors Falls".  So, that's where we went.  Interstate State Park is located there and it was a perfect spot.

I googled and collected ideas of fun things to do, planned meals, packed extra clothes for just in case, packed balls and books and found a Minnesota tree identification book at the library, and, and...oh, we didn't tell the kids.  That was part of the fun. 

Saturday morning Erin and I still slept in, well, mostly.  We got up and told the kids to get dressed because we were going somewhere.  JR was the first to ask where and I told him it was a secret.  He's a kid who needs a schedule, needs to know what's coming up next.  I hoped the secret destination wouldn't stress him out too much.  We told them to dress comfortable, in layers, and to add a hat.  That's all the information they got.

Our first stop was a bakery here in Brooklyn Park called Jack's.  Might as well start the day with a sweet treat eh?

The kids were excited to pick out a doughnut and share chocolate milk.  Erin and I needed the sugar and caffeine boost of a doughnut and coffee.  The kids asked if this was the secret place.  Nope!

It took us about an hour to get to the State Park.  We found a picnic area and the kids tossed around a ball.  We told them what some of our options for the day were.  We had looked into Geo-caching but we didn't have the right tools.  We watched some people canoe and thought about that.  We looked at a map of hiking trails.  We looked at some of the trees around and identified them. 

Erin cooked up hot dogs on our One Day Grill (it's a Walter family inside joke) that he received for Christmas.  We ate lunch and tossed a ball around some more.

The kids thought the treasure hunt that is Geo-caching sounded like fun.  We knew the cache should be near the trail so we headed out with our car's GPS.  We didn't end up finding the coordinates but we had a lot of fun hiking and rock climbing and seeing the beauty of God's creation.  We hiked rocky patches along the St. Croix River, and down in a ravine along a creek.  We saw lots of trees and occasionally stopped to rest and did leaf rubbings identifying the trees.  We talked about the world God made with our little ones.

The beauty we saw could not be captured by the camera but we tried to capture it in our minds.  The views were breathtaking along our walk.

When we reached Taylors Falls along our hike we saw that the "falls" are little more than some rapids where the river narrows.

After our hike we drove back over to the Taylors Falls area.  We had contemplated renting a canoe but at this point the parents were too worn out to row.  We looked into a boat tour of the river but we had planned on this being a low cost day and decided not to spend the extra money.  Instead we explored the potholes and climbed the rocks here in this part of the park.  My oldest did well climbing but those little two are wiggly and curious and sometimes leap without looking.  Climbing the rocks was a fun and visually stunning venture.  Most of the rocks we climbed led out to cliffs over the river giving gorgeous views,  but it made this Mama's heart flip and jump a little more than she could handle to have those little two climbing on there own.  We had to stop the climbing and move to safer ground.

On Sand Stone Bluffs trail, Erin had to help JJ down the steep stone steps.

Potholes full of murkey water.

The deepest of the potholes in the park is behind them.

Inside a pothole.  The walls are so smooth.

We had a picnic supper before leaving the park.  The kids all wanted to stay but we still had to do showers and such to get ready for church the next morning.  We didn't begin to explore the Wisconsin side of the park and we'd still like to do something on the water so maybe we'll be back.  The children would like that I think.

I had to get at least one picture of my big boy with his hat on backwards.

On the way home there was one more surprise stop.  It is fall and so we must have ice cream before the weather gets too cold.  We had hoped to stumble upon a privately owned ice cream shoppe but that was not to be.  Dairy Queen will do and so we did.

A sweet treat to begin, a sweet treat to end.  The Havens enjoyed their Secret Destination day.