Oh Deer!

Oh Deer !

Fort Snelling State Park

St. Paul, MN

11/11/12

1hr 45min, around 5 miles

For this past weekend's excursion, we decided to stay extra close to home.  Initially, we had plans to head southwest for a hike along the Minnesota River Valley, but time did not permit since we slept longer than anticipated in the morning and Deb had a noon soccer game in Minneapolis.  Once we chose Fort Snelling State Park as our destination, we set out to explore an area we have driven past several times for more than ten years but neither of us has taken an opportunity to explore.  

 

 

The park sits below the grounds of Fort Snelling and consists of 3,400 acres.  Due to our time crunch, we focused on one particular area of the park - Pike Island.  We can summarize our experience in this area in a couple of words....  Oh deer!  At least twenty of them in fact.  There were so many deer on the island that they almost seemed like squirrels or chipmunks.  We rarely went more than five or ten minutes while hiking without seeing at least one deer, if not a group of three or four.  We saw little deer (no fawns though), big deer, medium deer, bucks, does, two pointers and eight pointers.  The deer were neither aggressive nor timid; they appeared to go about their business and were content to let us go about ours.  We did see three hunters while hiking in the park, but they were armed only with expensive looking cameras and an apparent interest in capturing the activities of the local residents.

 

 

 

The landscape for our trek was not particularly diverse, but did offer some unique perspectives on our view of the local park and recreation areas.  Driving into the park, we were greeted by a fly-by from a large airplane landing at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.   At the parking lot, we were looking up at one of the many bridges in the area that take highway travelers from one destination to another without much thought of the land below.  We have ten years of experience on the roads above so we found our two hours down below to be a refreshing change of pace.  Once we were on the trail, we were exposed to the deer in droves and the sounds of trains passing in the not so distant distance.  The trail also at times captured the beauty of the meandering waterways that provided transportation for many people before trains, planes and automobiles existed.

 

 

 

 

The weather added its own unique touch, and for the first time during our training hikes in Minnesota we found ourselves hiking in precipitation.  It rained or sleeted lightly as we trekked around the park.  Although it offered a gentle test for some of our equipment, it posed no real threat to our comfort.  It was also relatively cool compared to other recent hikes, and yet out equipment continued to provide sufficient warmth combined with adequate breathability. 

 

 

Fort Snelling was well worth the visit.  The park offers ample mountain bike trails and sufficient hiking trails to keep most folks occupied.  It had an understated beauty to it and likely that beauty is enhanced when the trees are in bloom, during the fall color change, or once the snow has covered the ground.  On a rainy, dreary Sunday morning, it still held enough interest to capture the eyes of a couple of first timers and its proximity to the heart of the metro area make its presence and preservation all the more impressive.  Fort Snelling was the home and visiting place for many animals and people for hundreds or thousands of years before Europeans encroached upon the land, and the fact that it remains undeveloped (or returned to nature in the case of some areas) speaks well to efforts to conserve some slice of this planet where we are guests not residents.