Easter in Whitewater State Park

A beautiful warm, spring day today and Noelle, mom and I took full advantage of it. We headed from Galesville into southeastern Minnesota again, but this time a our destination was a different state park: Whitewater State Park. This lovely park is the site of some major flooding just over three years ago. While some evidence of the flood can still be seen, it is still a wonderful place to explore.

We started our hike near the visitor center and soon were forced to cross the Whitewater River on some less- than-ideally placed limestone blocks.

 After crossing the river we started to ascend into the forest and, like yesterday, were treated to some wonderful wildflower displays.

Soon we reached a ridge with some nice views.

 We would then descend some steep stairs.

 Besides the wildflowers, we saw some other signs of spring along the trail. There were lots of birds including downy and hairy woodpeckers, and yellow rumped warblers. We even saw a few snakes.

Having descended down to river level we were not quite ready to head back to the car. We decided to instead extend our hike a bit by hiking a short loop up to Chimney Rock.

The going started out a bit steep, but we soon reached a ridge where we found the aforementioned rock.
Chimney Rock had a few small tunnels in it.

They were almost like little arches. Noelle and I explored them a bit.

From Chimney Rock we descended down to the river, walked the road for a bit and then found ourselves back at the car. It was a great way to spend a beautiful Easter Sunday.