Blogging Miz Daisy: Hiking George Crosby State Park {Day 2}

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Hiking George Crosby State Park {Day 2}

-July 2, 2010-

After a nice nights sleep on the earth's surface, I wanted to check our food first thing! If you remember when we went to Split Rock last year, and awoke to find the chipmunks had gotten into our food. I was worried that we wouldn't have anything left to eat the next three days if a bear or rodents managed to steal our food. But we lucked out! Our food was safe!

Today's plan was to hike the park, we wanted to take the trail that went south along the river, then swing over west and come up on another trail that was a little less rough terrain. First we had breakfast, bagels with freeze dried scrambled eggs and coffee.

Then we headed off down the trail. Looking back at my pictures, I didn't get any of the crazy trail, just the pretty scenery. Since we were right along the river, we stopped a lot to look down stream and enjoyed listening to the cascades.

We stopped at an overlook, where I actually had phone service for a second. Once we got off the main hwy 61 to head back to this state park, our phones went out of service, so I wasn't able to call mom to tell her we made it safely. I still wasn't able to call because the signal was scarce, but I was able to send a quick email saying all is well and I'll call her tomorrow when we were on the road up to Canada. We stopped for a little snack and enjoyed the breeze.

We also got to watch a little butterfly fluttering around.

I tried and tried to get him to open his wings and finally was able to snap the camera when he had them open for a split second

Then we headed back down the hill, excited for the adventure ahead of us. It got close to lunch time so we decided to stop and have a swim, then fix our lunch (well squeeze the tuna salad out of the foil packets onto bagel slices).

It also gave us a chance to try out our waterproof camera IN the water. It felt nice to dip in the cold water. I of course was a chicken and didn't want to get too far. There was a drop off after a few of the 6 inch in rocks, and I didn't want to venture off of those. The crawdad's were abundant as well, which I didn't want to get my toes nibbled on. Kyle had a fun time swimming though :-)

We even got Harpo to go in a little bit... but he does NOT like the water.

We fixed lunch, then attempted to get a few family photos...

We trekked a little farther and came across a little hidden waterfall.

It was a little bit of the trail, but we stopped and enjoyed it for a bit. Then we hiked on, we were almost to the end of the trail we were wanting to take and were looking for where it curved around and went west of the river. I wish I would have gotten some pictures of the trail, because it was RUGGED! We were tree trunk climbing, rock jumping, and limb swatting. Some parts we weren't even sure if we were on a trail, but then it would come back again and we'd know we were going the right way. About every 20 minutes we'd pass a campsite entrance. and about every 2 hours we'd come across a map showing us where we were. We made it to where we thought would curve around, to find a sign saying "dead end to campsites 13-16" We knew we didn't want to go that way, and we were planning to take the trail that went west before that spot, but we never found it. It was at that moment that our life as we knew it was demoralized. lol, okay not our life, just our hike. We were crushed that we were going to have to go BACK through everything we just went through. It wasn't bad the first time because we had the thought of "glad we're through that, won't have to do that again" but as we turned around, shoulders sunken, we knew what lay ahead, and it wasn't a happy moment. And I stopped taking pictures.

We did although come across a snake, the first and only snake we saw the whole time.

One thing I love about Minnesota is there are no poisonous snakes or spiders, it's great!

Then we walked up hill for about 30-45 minutes straight! At that moment we would have given anything to just teleport ourselves to our campsite.

We did eventually make it back, dropped our packs off, grabbed the water filter, went down to the cascades and took a dip in the water. We also had to treat some water for dinner. We made dinner back at the campsite. Probably the worst dinner ever, but it didn't matter, we were starving!!! The noodles were under cooked and the packaged salmon as icky. We were pooped! And so was Harpo!! As soon as we got in our tent he was out like a light!

We played some cards for a while because we didn't think it was right to go to bed at 7:30.... so we waited til 9:00 then we were probably out as soon as our heads hit our ~~pillow~~ folded up sweatshirts.