Give thanks for Minnesota State Parks
I set my backpack down on a rock and started digging-in. Beef Jerky. Barbecue-flavor soy nuts. Chocolate brownie Clifbar. A bottle of Gatorade.
One by one I set the pieces of my feast upon the bench at one of my favorite backcountry campsites on the Superior Hiking Trail. Nearby, the Split Rock River cascaded providing me with dinner music.
Thanksgiving 2011.
The
previous evening I had camped on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior at
Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. As I sat by my campfire listening to
the waves crashing against the rocks below, I thought to myself, “I bet
I’m the only person camping at any state park in Minnesota tonight.”
Since our Thanksgiving was going to be celebrated that Saturday and I
had to work on Friday, I thought I’d take one more trip to the Shore
before the ski season started.
Minnesota State Parks and the Superior Hiking Trail - those are two things ranked pretty high one my “I’m thankful for…” list. It seemed only natural to celebrate the holiday there.
Last week I decided to keep my state park Thanksgiving tradition alive another year. Except this time, I WAS going down to visit family on Thanksgiving Day. That gave me the perfect opportunity to camp again on Thanksgiving Eve and pay a quick visit to half a dozen state parks along the way home.
Wednesday night I ran up to McCarthy Beach right after work. Shockingly, I hadn’t visited the park since Labor Day Weekend! Too much time on the North Shore this fall, I guess.
Upon
arriving at McCarthy I set-up camp in about thirty seconds. Throwing a
self-inflating sleeping pad on a bed of pine needles, I placed my
sleeping bag and Scooby Doo pillow on top of it. Then I put on my
headlamp, and grabbed my book and the newest issue of POWDER to read at the picnic table. No campfire required. The stars were good enough.
It was a quiet night. The loons which usually sing me to sleep at McCarthy had long since departed for the winter. A gentle breeze through the pines was the only sound. After reading to the point of yawning, I crawled into my bag, put my glasses in one of my shoes and instantly fell asleep under the Milky Way.
Thanksgiving morning I awoke to an amazing sunrise over Side Lake. As the sky turned orange, the forest woke-up as well. Chickadees began chatting with their “good morning” calls. The chirring of red squirrels answered back.
After taking about 500 sunrise photos, I packed-up (again taking about half a minute) and headed out. I had a long way to drive that day to get to my Thanksgiving dinner, but my route would take me past six of our finest state parks. My day of thanks had begun!
o
My first stop after McCarthy Beach was Moose Lake State Park. Although there was fairly heavy holiday traffic on the roads, the park itself was deserted. I drove down to the picnic area by the beach for a short photo walk. Birds flitted around the shoreline as I examined various tracks in the sand. There was lots of evidence of shorebirds and deer but not many human tracks. That’s a cool thing about our parks. Even in the offseason for tourists, the wildlife is still there living as they always have.
o
After Moose Lake, it was a short drive to Banning State Park on the scenic Kettle River. As I hiked along the rapids I saw evidence of the flood from back in June. The river was much lower now. Banning is full of impressive rock formations along the river and it was fun to scramble long the bank to view the whitewater. There were actually quite a few people out enjoying the day at Banning - taking advantage of the last warm day before the forecasted cold front came through.
o
The next park on my route was Wild River, a park named after the wild St Croix - the river I grew-up on. There, I took a short walk among a restored oak savanna, then down to the river itself. Across the water I heard many gunshots as the Wisconsin deer season was in full force. It reminded me of the many Thanksgiving deer hunts my dad and I have made over the years. In fact, most of the deer we have harvested were taken on Thanksgiving day.
o
Park
number five was Interstate, just six miles from my hometown. I took a
quick hike atop the rocky dalles overlooking the river and gazed across
at many hikers enjoying the Pothole Trail at Wisconsin’s Interstate.
Whenever I am back home and need a quick hiking fix I head to the
Wisconsin park - one of the first places I ever fell in love with
hiking. In fact, the next day I did hike at Wisconsin’s Interstate,
enjoying the contrast of the rocks with the fresh snowfall.
o
The final park in my Thanksgiving six pack was William O’Brien, just a few more miles downstream on the St Croix. Many times I’ve canoed the St Croix past the campground at William O’Brien, the scent of campfire wafting over the river adding something special to a summer evening paddle. I walked beside the river and then along the shore of Lake Alice where I saw about a thousand Canada geese - and one swan. By that time the wind was picking up and the air was noticeably colder than the warm morning I woke-up to at McCarthy Beach. Within three hours each of the six parks I had visited that day would be covered in a nice layer of snow.
o
It was now three o’clock in the afternoon and since the sun rose over my campsite at McCarthy Beach I had visited, briefly, six of Minnesota’s 72 state parks. A very appropriate way to spend the day of giving thanks to the parks and trails which have given me so much. As I hiked, I was thankful for the people who had the foresight to set aside these special parts of our state, and for the people who will continue to protect them for the future.
Plus, I was good and hungry for great Thanksgiving dinner.
In : Hiking
Tags: minnesota state parks mccarthy beach thanksgiving lake supeior split rock camping
Zach Johns is an alpine skier, backpacker, paddler and all-around nature lover who lives on Minnesota‘s Iron Range. Originally from Osceola, Wis., Johns attended the University of Minnesota-Duluth so he could ski every day and be close to the trails of his beloved North Shore. There, he earned a degree in Communication and was editor of the student newspaper. However, the real education he gained at UMD was in honing his outdoor skills. He took courses in subjects such as backpacking, winter camping, rock climbing and canoe tripping. By the time he graduated, that was all he wanted to do. In January of 1997, he moved to the Range where he met a group of die-hard skiers dedicated to making turns at Giants Ridge every single day of the winter (when they weren’t out skiing the big mountains of the west.) Throughout the late nineties he built a very impressive ski resume, taking several trips to Utah, Montana, Wyoming, California, British Columbia and Alaska. During the off-season, he took to the hiking trails. In 1997, he hiked the entire Superior Hiking Trail during the single season (what had been completed until that time) and in following years, took trips to Yosemite, Glacier and the Grand Canyon. He also made two attempts to climb King’s Peak, the highest mountain in Utah, but failed to summit both times. In 1999, he attempted the infamous 43-mile Kekekabic Trail through the heart of the BWCA and limped out after only ten miles with a hernia. He did finally complete the Kek in 2005, during one of the hottest weeks on record. Besides hiking, he also continued dabbling with paddling, making several canoe trips to the BWCA and became an enthusiastic (yet very novice) whitewater kayaker. He is now a father of two sons, Nick and Jackson, who accompany their father on nearly all his adventures. Both were skiing fairly soon after they could stand and from 2006-2011, the three hiked in every state park in Minnesota, 195 miles of hiking in 65 parks. Since becoming a dad, Johns has suddenly realized that you can’t just be out there skiing, hiking, paddling, etc. without also working to protect the very things you love. With that in mind, he founded an adventure club at work to get co-workers outside who might not otherwise be inspired to go. The club has gone on hiking, paddling, winter camping and cycling trips and annually go on a trash pick-up hike to celebrate Earth Day. He believes that once you get people out into beautiful wild places, the more likely they will be to protect them. He has also done a lot of volunteer work for the Superior Hiking Trail Association including adopting a backcountry campsite which he and the boys maintain twice a year. It is of extreme importance, he believes, to introduce children to the outdoors early. Not only is it good for them, but they will be the ones protecting these places once we are gone. Future plans? There are a few local goals to check-off including hiking the Border Route Trail in the BWCA and Isle Royale. Mostly, it’s just to take the boys hiking and camping in more of our national parks, skiing the big western mountains, and more of their usual seasonal cycle: Giants Ridge in the winter, Superior’s North Shore in the spring, South Shore in the summer and back to the North Shore in the fall.
