Beaver Creek Valley State Park

Today Noelle and I were on a quest to find spring. It's been cold thus far in Duluth and we just wanted to get out and do some hiking. We headed down south to Galesville for the second weekend in a row and headed back into Minnesota for a hike in Beaver Creek Valley State Park.

The drive to the park was pleasant and we surprisingly passed a few snow drifts. We arrived at the park with cool temperatures and an overcast sky. There were even a few drops of rain in the air, but not enough to get us wet. Our hike started out with a bit of an ascent up to the rim of the creek valley. We found a few wildflowers along the way.

After spending some time on the rim, we descended back down to the creek.

In the flood plain of the creek is where we found lots of flowers in bloom.

 Eventually we made our way to an old farm site. The field there had been recently burned exposing an old homestead.

There we found some old bottles. One of the more interesting bottles was an old Mountain Dew one.

Shortly after visiting the homestead we were at the halfway point of our hike and the Hiking Club password. There was an interesting old bridge there and from it we peered down into the creek to see some massive trout.

Eventually we made our way up a limestone ridge again,

passing some small caves.

 When we finally returned to the car, we had hiked just over two miles. It was a pleasant hike and by this time the sun was peeking out of the clouds a bit and the temperature was rising.