Minneopa State Park

Wednesday was supposed to be nice, and it was.  Really nice.  80 degrees plus.  Set a record in the Twin Cities for that day.  So it worked out well that we planned a trip down to Minneopa State Park near Mankato to enjoy the weather with the top down and drop off a Cards Against Humanity expansion for Klund and Mrs. Klund.

The Klunds are off sampling wine, but they have housesitters.  Serial killer in a van housesitters.



Minneopa was a little park.  And the water wasn't exactly running high.  But it was good for an hour of amusement.  These signs always confuse me.  Shouldn't ALL pets be on a leash?  Even if they're exotic instead of domestic?  I'm pretty sure they mean, "don't worry about the squirrels", but those aren't really pets.  And if they were.  They'd need a leash.


This sign sort of grossed Eryn out.  I dared her to lick the ice flow in the falls to see if it tasted of fecal matter.  Then she said, "How would I know if it tasted like fecal matter?!"  I said if she's smelled it, she's tasted it.  Which seemed to bother her even more.  There was a more in depth sign that pointed out sometimes the falls are green with algal blooms and sometimes brown from sediment, and fecal matter is there pretty much 24x7x365.  A result of being at the end of the watershed in a heavily farmed area.


Even without a lot of water they were pretty.  This is the upper falls.


And a nice picture of Eryn looking at them.


Here she is with Minneopa Falls behind her.  For a moment, I thought this was all there was to see.  So why would you leave Minneapolis and Minnehaha Falls?


But there was more.

Panorama

At the end of the sidewalk were steps that led down into the area below the falls and back up again along a ridge.  No geocaches as it's a state park, but perhaps Eryn can get herself Chived for doing what she wants.  Not exactly dangerous.  The sign is there because the fence is washed out way back there behind her.


You can get down below the lower falls, and there's still a bit of ice hanging out.  This photo would probably bother Eryn.  It looks like she's posing, but she's really just trying to get her jacket off.  Remember? 80+!


The falls without people in the picture.


But not really.  If you could blow it up enough, there are carvings almost everywhere.  It's one of the most scratched up areas I've ever seen.  Next to the falls, High on the walls right by the falls.  On the cliffs near the falls.  On the cliffs opposite the falls.  Next to the stairs going down and going up.  It's graffiti central.  I think the best one can hope for is that archaeologists of the future find it interesting.


Here you can see the carving in the context of the falls.

Panorama

Eryn sitting near the falls.  My wife was amused to see ERYON carved near her.  She didn't do that.  She knows how to spell her name.


The use wasp nests for bulbs in the state parks.  We're that hardcore in Minnesota.  I'm surprised they leave it there given it's near the picnic area.  You'd think everyone would be surrounded in wasps.


Oh no!  But that's only a fall, not falls!


There we go.  Two is officially fallS.


We stopped for a sandwich in Mankato and enjoyed all the dust devils and wind.  Not hard to believe Minnesota is in a drought.  And hit the rest stop on our way home where we were treated to this near the Cambria warehouse.  Apparently he's driving a lot more than we were.

Blue Springs and the Manatees

Our last full day in Orlando, we rented a car and went to Blue Springs State Park. When I was younger, let's say it wasn't 25 years ago, Kyle, Ben and I did a summer trip from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., then down the coast to Florida, and back to Minnesota.  We were poor and operating mostly out of a car with a tent and some bicycles, so we did a lot of camping at ad hoc locations.  One place we stopped was Blue Springs, renowned as a wintering area for manatees.  Around mid-November they shut down the swimming because hundreds of manatees swim into the spring area to enjoy the relatively warm 72 degree water coming from the spring.  But on November 1 swimming was still open and there was a chance we'd see a few.  You're supposed to stay away from them as the rangers have had problems with teenagers carving their initials into them (yes, really) and pushing the babies away from their mothers, but even when you don't go near them, they like to come give you a shove and swim under you, and roll around in your space.

There are alligators in the area as well, although for the most part they seem to stay away from where the manatees are.  I suspect they lose to the manatees in any shoving match.  And the water in the spring area is so clear you can see everything in your space.  Over the "boil", the spring, which is like 120 feet deep and has a constant stream of scuba divers going to and from it even on a slow day like the day we were there, you can see down to where all the water is welling up to push you around which is a bit creepy.

Near the entrance to the spring area, where it joins the river and the water is more brackish and full of weedy places to hide, there are many warnings about the alligators.  They don't want you to miss them.


Although Eryn's not scared of any damn sign.  I think I see some eyes in the water to her right.


The water is even clearer than it looks in this picture.  All those brown things are big three foot long gars.


The staff pointed us at a geocache that doesn't seem to be in geocaching.com.  Perhaps it's because it's full of two kilos of cocaine?  I jest. Those are two bags of rock/sand, and the cache was some sort of Sea World cache.  Eryn grabbed a coin and bracelet, but there was no way to log the find.


Let us get to the actual manatees.  Here are the two that were swimming with Eryn and I.  A mother and her pup.


It's not well known that manatees are particularly susceptible to mind control.  Here I do my best to start my manatee army of evil by implanting the mental suggestion that they go forth and do my bidding.  If you're an enemy of mine, I'd stay away from any temperate waters and avoid any manatees dressed as mermaids.


They seemed to particularly like Eryn and would follow her around.  She was a little nervous when she was out in the open water where she couldn't touch the bottom, but there was a nice set of steps you could sit on, as well as some shallow areas with rocks.  In this picture she wasn't going under to look at them first.  They were definitely coming over to stare at her.


Go forth!  Do as I command!  In this picture do I look as cold as I felt?  72 degrees isn't freezing, but it's not exactly swimming pool warm, and there was a good breeze blowing branches out of the trees that added to the chill and called up goose bumps on my pasty white Minnesota skin.


Pooteewheet checking out the manatees.  They made it a point to wander back and forth underneath her.


The steps I was referring to and the manatees getting a close look at Eryn.  She says this was her favorite part of vacation.  Even better than the roller coasters and Harry Potter world.


My favorite picture was one I could have taken in Minnesota.  SQUIRREL!!!  I think it lends itself to putting a word bubble on it so I can add silly captions.