A Day at Fort Snelling

This past Thursday we decided to spend a day at Fort Snelling State Park. Blake had come down the night before and supposedly somebody he knew said, "It's the coolest place in Minneapolis."

Brooke claimed she'd never been here before, but later on admitted that she had. We thought a good way to explore the old fort site was with some geocaching. Brooke's sister Brittany and her husband Jeff introduced us to this GPS led scavenger hunt a few years back.

I have ridden my bike past it, but had never seen any of the buildings up close. 

The first cache we were looking for was either on the banks of the Mississippi or across the river. The next one was easy to find.

Obligotary shot of hipsters resting post-super long hill. They should've got a bike with gears.

Gears or no gears, hills still suck. 

Once we went down to the valley below Fort Snelling-proper we geoed another cache. Of course Blake found this one too.

It turns out that there aren't any caches on big island that make up most of the park. What we did find was a big cage in the forest.

Brooke and Blake went inside. Blake's face is priceless.

I must be embarrassing him in front of his friends. 

For some reason my wife really wanted to walk on the thin ice. 

Blake and I have robot arms. 

Since there were no more caches we just walked the big loop around the island.

Everybody found a tree to hide in except for me.

Say cheese!

When we were walking around we noticed that all the trees were a lighter color for the first six feet. The flooding last year must have been intense. It seems that the Minnesota River (to the right) floods every year. The lack of snow fall this winter kept most of this beach bare.

  The second half of our trek wasn't that interesting, but we did spot a pack of deer on the lonely island.  At this point I realized I was out of shape. That can only mean one thing: bike rides.