Up the River... Again

Posted Sun, May 24, 2009 - 7:26 PM
minnesota, photography, stateparks

Ahhh... A trip "up the river" on the long weekend. Wild River State Park, that is. The Trillium Trail certainly lived up to its name; this is a hillside in back of the B lane.

Along the Trillium Trail

Conditions were a bit dry out. The trilliums were bursting, but the only other flowers present were wild geranium. I walked down the stairs to the River Terrace loop and found a little more variety there; bellwort, miterwort, a little bit of blue phlox, and marsh marigolds in the swampy areas to the left of the trails. I also found some flowers I wasn't able to identify:

Unidentified flowers

They look like the sprays of tall meadow-rue, but it's still early in the season and there weren't any rue-like leaves around.

Instead of going back up at the picnic area, I walked down to the river. There were a few people out in canoes already. These folks were landing at the beach, but I think at least one of them needs to put a shirt on.

Landing at the beach

And of course, there was a family playing out on one of the sandbars. The river is down to normal summer levels, which means plenty of shallow water.

On the sandbar

I took the small trail along the river's edge back to the bottom of the stairs and found a pretty little moth trying to hide himself amongst the brown leaves:

A moth

Before heading up the stairs and back to the car, I had to get one more shot of the river under the clearing sky.

Looking up the St. Croix River

Even though it was one of the busiest weekends of the year, it still ended up being a nice peaceful day.