Fort Snelling State Park

This summer we bought a year-long state park vehicle pass and we've been trying to hit as many state parks as we can. So far we've been to Afton, Forestville, and William O'Brien. Today we hit Fort Snelling State Park.

Fort Snelling State Park is located near where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers meet. It is very close to the airport and, more importantly according to Nick and Xander, the Mall of America. Planes were taking off over head when we arrived at the park. I thought that would be pretty annoying, but they either stopped or the sound doesn't travel very well down into the river valley. In any case, the park is very peaceful despite the fact that it is surrounded by the airport and numerous highways.

We've been doing a lot of geocaching during our visits to state parks. For those who don't know, geocaching is a sport where you use a GPS to find a hidden object at a given set of coordinates. Usually when you find one point, you will be given coordinates to the next point. Many of the state parks have their own official geocaches and even loan out GPS units.

Following the GPS to a given set of coordinates is usually dead simple. The only challenge is that the GPS points you in the direction you need to go, but trails can take some unexpected twists and turns. We've selected the wrong trail a couple of times and had to double-back.

The tricky part with some geocaching courses is finding the objects hidden at the coordinates. The GPS will get you close, but you usually need to search a 30 foot radius or so for the hidden object. In some courses the objects are easy to find. At Afton State Park, the objects were the size of water bottles. In some cases they were pretty well hidden. At William O'Brien, the objects were MUCH smaller - about 2 inches long and a half-inch in diameter. They were very cleverly hidden. So well hidden that we couldn't find them without help. The geocache points at Fort Snelling State Park were the easiest to find. They were always located on big information billboards.

In addition to hiking the various trails, we walked up the bluff to historic Fort Snelling, which is one of my favorite Minnesota places. We have free admittance with our family Minnesota historical society membership, so we stopped in for a short visit. Nick and Xander really enjoyed the view from the main tower.

It was a beautiful summer day and the I think the kids had a good time. While hiking the trails we saw two separate deer that were in the woods not more than 30 feet away from the trail. The kids climbed trees, had sword fights with sticks, and threw rocks in the woods. All in all, a great summer day. Sadly I forgot my camera, so no pictures.

___
Follow me on Twitter