Blue Mounds State Park

Greetings readers. Today I want to show you a bunch of pictures form previous events. I won't go in chronological order, because, well, I don't want to....and it's my blog and I don't have to. I'm going to start with my trip to Blue Mounds State Park and Luverne, MN on Saturday with Rachel; followed by some A&A stuff and pics from the Memorial Day party. I'll just post what I have, little by little, and keep adding on to the same post, rather than creating a new post for every topic. So, if you see the same headline on top of the blog all day today, that doesn't mean I haven't added more to the bottom....

So anyway, on Friday night I was hanging with Rachel at my place watching a movie, and suddenly we decided that we should take a day trip on Saturday.......and we decided to go to Blue Mounds. So we left Saturday morning at 7:00am. It was a beautiful morning, and we drove the roughly 3 1/2 hours to Luverne, and got there around 10:30-11:00. As we drive into the city we see a mass of people in downtown Luverne, and realize that the road is closed and there's a parade going on! I think the entire county was in Luverne that day, because there was no place to park in this tiny town in SW Minnesota. Well, we came to find out during our lunch at this little sandwich shop, that Luverne is celebrating "Buffalo Days" that weekend. The town was covered with American Flags of all sizes; there was a craft show going on in the city park(which we skipped), and various other activities throughout the weekend. But after we ate, we got out of town and headed for Blue Mounds State Park.

(As you can see in the photo, they had a "Buffalo Days" sign on every table....oh, and they also like "Faith" in Luverne, MN)

We parked and decided to walk the 2 mile trail that goes along the edge of the Bison range. I'd never seen bison/buffalo before, so that was pretty cool for me. I was surprised, but they didn't seem to care that we were standing 50 feet away....they just layed there, and some munched on some grass. Damn lazy animals, we want entertainment. However, the walk in the hot prarie got to be a little long for me. By the time we got to the visitors center on the other side of the park I was pooped. I chugged a bunch of water and we started back on the 2 mile walk back to our car, and the little swimming beach that was our true destination! On our way back there was a flock of about 10-15 hawks circling above us, hunting in the prarie, which was pretty cool.

When we left the car about 11:30 the beach was completely desterted. Of course, when we came back there was a mass of small children in the water with their parents covering the beach...ugh. We went in for a few minutes, but after about 10 minutes the muddy water and small children drove us away, and we headed home.
(note: the drive home included a 3 hr. '20 Questions' marathon...good times!)