Posts Tagged With: Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge

Headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River at Itasca State Park in MN

Saint Paul, MN October 26

We will be leaving tomorrow for a week’s trip to Florida. We will blog about our travels and adventures in Florida next week so we want to wrap up our fall “close to home” activities.

Minnesota, like many other states in our diverse and beautiful country, has an extensive state park system. There are 76 state parks in Minnesota. Many people, we included, visit state parks that are near to their home and/or have a unique feature. To encourage people to visit all of the Minnesota state parks, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR oversees our state parks) has a program called the Passport Club. A person buys a booklet at a state park and then when they visit a MN state park, the booklet is stamped and dated from that park. In retirement, we decided to see how long it would take us to visit all the parks. We started in April 2015 and got our 74th stamp last October. (Two parks do not have to be visited since they can only be accessed by boat.). We picnicked, hiked and participated in programs at parks we never would have visited except for this passport challenge.

We have decided to complete a second MN State Parks Passport and have added the challenge of doing the Hiker’s Club hike that is identified at each park. These hikes range from 1 mile to 6 miles. We have already visited 9 parks on our road to complete our second passport book.

Itasca State Park

Hiking at Wild River (top), Lake Louise (Chris in pic) and Interstate State Parks in MN

This month we visited Itasca State Park with Ed’s sister Jude. Itasca is the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River. It begins its 2350 mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico as a small stream flowing out of Lake Itasca where flat rocks and a footbridge have been placed to allow people to walk across the Mississippi. Itasca is the second oldest state park in the nation, after Niagra State Park in New York. The park is home to over 100 lakes and thousands of acres of wetlands and forests. We also visited and hiked at Lake Louise, Interstate and Wild River State Parks this month.

The Nuns’ Bus in Cedar Rapids IA

Have you ever heard of the Nuns on the Bus? The advocacy arm of U.S. women religious (nuns) over the years has criss-crossed the country on a bus tour to talk about targeted political issues. This October a group started in California on a truth tour to talk about the Republicans’ tax policy. They hold town hall meetings, meet with members of Congress, have site visits and rally’s. Last week, they (and their bus) were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for a town hall meeting on our nations’ recently enacted tax policies. We went down for the meeting, listened to the presentation and joined the small group discussions on what an individual can do (VOTE).

Prior to the evening gathering, we went to the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library in Cedar Rapids. One gallery was a heart wrenching telling of Czechoslovakia during WWI and shortly thereafter. Czechoslovakia no longer exists; divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. If folks feel depressed about our current political climate, reflect on history, ours and that of other nations.

Returning to St. Paul from Cedar Rapids across IA farm land and along the Mississippi River

We stayed overnight in Cedar Rapids after the nuns’ program and since the next day turned out to be one of our rare (for this year) glorious fall days, we decide to take the long way back to St. Paul through western Wisconsin. We stopped at a wonderful conservation interpretation center in Clayton County, IA and were pleased to discover a new information center that opened this summer along the Great River Road in Genoa, WI by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Mary of the Angels Chapel attached to St. Rose Convent

At the nuns’ program in Cedar Rapids, we met some nuns (Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration) who had come down from LaCrosse, WI. They invited us to stop at their convent, St. Rose Convent, if we had time; we did and were so glad we stopped. We had a tour, with historical commentary, of their chapel (located on the campus of Viterbo University) and their perpetual adoration chapel (a Catholic worship space) that has had uninterrupted prayers being said in it 24/7 since August 1878!

Sandhill cranes at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge

Last weekend we participated in a bright and early (6:30 a.m.) activity at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge to watch the morning wake-up of about 9,000 sandhill cranes from their roost to forage in neighboring fields as they fatten up for their flight to Florida. It was 32 degrees out with 20 mph winds; there was no bird watching shelter, so were outside for 2 hours. We have seen 200,000 sandhill cranes in Kearney, Nebraska several years ago so this was a low-key affair but worth it. In an interesting fact (to us, at least) the Kearney sandhill cranes migrate north to Canada from Texas, going to the west of Minnesota. The Minnesota sandhill cranes migrate southeast to Florida. Maybe we will see some of the same birds next week, we did not check to see how long the cranes’ migration journey takes.

We continued this month our volunteer work with the Bell Museum of Natural History and Ed with the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, including the annual volunteer dinner where Ed received a National Park Service backpack for exceeding 750 cumulative hours of service.

Did we mention to VOTE on November 6?!

Fall in St. Paul, two days apart

Chris and Ed
October 26