Tag: hiking

Blue Mounds State Park, Minnesota (repost with pics)

Location: 1:20 minutes away from Brookings, SD just north of Luverne, MN.  
Distance: 13 miles of trail
Difficulty: Easy- day hiking for the whole family
Dogs allowed on leash
  Mother’s Day (2015) hike with the entire family at the Blue Mounds State Park which is an easy drive from the house, perfect for a quick day hike. The climbers I know keep inviting me to head to Blue Mounds for the climbing, so I wanted to go do a bit of reconnaissance; and when I looked it up online and found it had 13 miles of trails and a buffalo herd, I was sold. 

  The hike itself is the perfect high interest trail for the kids to get involved in. There are many trail markers/sign posts for them to stop at and practice their navigating skills; as the entire trail is mowed it is impossible for them to get lost. We started heading out along the bison field; which kept the kids moving along as they were seeing who would be the first to spot the herd. The only downside being that you are hiking along a huge prison-style fence; which is a pretty good scene killer. There were several false spottings of boulders but once we did find the herd, it was the perfect opportunity to sit on a big rock and have our snack. 

  The trail is essentially an oblong loop along the ledge of the rock wall. For the three hours we were there we saw an impressive number of animals. Bison herd, white tailed deer, a snake, a whole host of insects, vultures and assorted birds. The terrain is slightly rolling but gentle on the knees. The kids had a blast hunting the cactus and watching for animals. The trail is a perfect family day out.
  While we only had a short time to explore the entire family agreed it is a great spot to go back and check out again. The park has done a really good job of making itself interactive and enjoyable. The signs stated that we could rent canoes, check out fishing equipment (free), bird watching equipment (free) and there was a scavenger hunt/geocache along the trail. The trailhead sports a vault toilet, volleyball and a swing set. This is just a very enjoyable little place to bring the whole family and enjoy a picnic, view some wildlife and get a little (though mild) trail action. 

  Final thoughts- high interest level for the kids and nice and relaxing for the parents. Not a bad way to spend a day!

  http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/blue_mounds/index.html

Water Filter Props To the Platypus GravityWorks

Because Water is Kinda Essential

 

Platypus GravityWorks Filter System Bottle Kit – 2 Liter

One of my favorite pieces of gear in my pack is by far my water filter. For years the hubby and I had this pump action, top of water bobber system that stank. You would work hard to get the water pumped out and the float would often pop out of the water in the process, while simultaneously moving the water tube enough to stir up sediment from the bottom. We never needed to use this in a trickle of a stream, which is a good thing, because I am not sure we would have had any success.  

But now we don’t worry about any of that, we just let gravity do the work. When we were looking at our outdated gear last spring ahead of our 3 day trip along the Lost Coast of Northern California many things were replaced with newer, lighter items. Our sleeping bag volume was halved, the cook pot kit dropped half its weight; but I balked a bit when we got toward the end of the spending spree and my husband kept eyeing a new water filter; after all, we had one that worked couldn’t we keep at least one old item for budgets sake? I sighed and handed over the credit card one more time to the REI gods, and our Platypus GravityWorks Filter arrived. I was stunned. You filled up the bag (clearly marked dirty water, thank you very much) and just sit back and wait for the water to flow down and into your bottle. I was a bit stunned by the simple genius of it.

Longer to set up than to fill

 How it works. 

 

Fill the dirty bag with water. The nice thing is that is can ben dipped in a larger body of water or held under a trickle to be filled. You attached the hose connection that includes the filter with a one snap system, that can be accomplished with one hand while holding the water bag in the other, and put the lower hose into your bottle (it has several options of end pieces to fit different bottle styles) and then hold the bag up or use the strap to attach it to a branch to await your clean water. We did have a problem with slow flow, but a quick read of the instructions included in the carrying bag showed we just needed to backfill the end section of the hose with water from our clean bottle and then it picked right up again. It generally took longer to get the filter out, fill the dirty bag with water and attach the hose to the bottle, than it did for the water to actually filter through the system and into a liter bottle. Pretty quick filtration. The product description states a flow rate of 1.5ZL per minute but it at least seems longer than that in practice.


 

Potential Drawback.

 

The extra 2L water carrying capacity came in extremely handy when we needed to fill up 6L per person for a day and a half stretch without any water sources. What we didn’t expect was to wake up from a night of 22degrees with a dirty bag filled with ice water- heavy on the ice. Only after putting it on a branch in the sun and attempting to fill what we could of a water bottle did we notice the warning on the side of the filter saying to not freeze the unit. Does filtering ice water count as freezing the filter? Fortunately, the filter portion had been insulated within my pack inside the rainfly of the tent and didn’t actually freeze, and the filter did perform fine after the ice water filtration, but it does highlight a potential drawback to the system for a girl who lives in the wind-swept frozen tundra. 

 

2 extra liters to go.


 

Overall the Platypus GravityWorks water filter works smashingly well. At the meager weight of 9.5oz and priced right around $100 it is one of the best investments of space and money I have made within my pack. 


 

The Start of Taming the Mile Monster

I currently live in South Dakota where I am trying to balance a family of five, two large lab/shepherd mixes, an editing career and an active lifestyle which includes as much travel as possible and as much physical fitness as I can squeeze in. My husband and spent countless weekends pre-kiddos hiking and exploring the parks of Northern California (under grad) and Central Kentucky (grad school). Now that the kids are old enough to be mobile, I am determined to get as much hiking done as possible both in short trips with the whole fam and longer outing solo with the babysitting mightiest of the grandparents at work. My hope is to record many fine adventures out on the trail hiking.

 

Big Flatts, Lost Coast, CA


Running became my favorite activity after becoming a mom. It satisfies many of my needs simultaneously, I get a fit, I get out of the house and into the fresh sunshiny air, and I get an hour inside my own head without any external demands. I only came to running/walking/hiking as an adult and struggled at first with getting miles under my belt. They do add up if you take the time to put one foot forward at a time. Much of it is a mental game. The body is physically built to move and with a gradual building of time and distance, can accomplish any distance you challenge it to. My mental game is simple, I set a mileage goal and then tell myself that I won’t stop until I get to the end. I might slow way down, but I don’t stop. And it works. I remind myself that my body was designed to move, and once I can walk a distance it is only kicking it into the next gear to jog and then run. 

 

Running the Dakota Nature Park, Brookings, SD


Going into our first long hike in years, my husband prepared by working like a madman to ensure he could take the time off, and I completed my first full marathon. You can imagine the fitness disparity. Not having been an integral part of trip planning before, I approached the trails lengths in relationship to the miles I knew I was capable of from running. If I could run 12 miles in a few hours in the morning to start the day then I reasoned we could do that in the course of an entire day weighted down by packs. Also, it felt like a real challenge and we could see so much more from say 30 miles rather than 20. Things I underestimated: terrain, switchbacks and mountains don’t eat the miles up like a city paved park; my husbands need to pack for every known contingency, leading to him carrying way more weight than he should have; blisters on his feet; the need to stop and soak it all in. We made 10-12 miles a day, but it took from early morning to dark each day, and the pace was not enjoyable for half of our team. This thought led to the my title. I am both driven by the mile monster in me who thrives on the challenge of seeing how many miles I can eat up, and understand the need to tame the monster, relax and enjoy the journey. Here’s to balance. 

 

Husband taking a well earned rest, Lost Coast, CA