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A muddy hike in Garvin

Although it was gray and cloudy last Saturday, the temperatures weren’t frigid and there wasn’t any snow in the forecast. We were OK with a little jaunt outside in a nearby park. Last Saturday’s selection was Garvin Park. When we got to the entrance, we noted one car parked by the information sign, but that was it for visitors (well as far as we could see).

A couple or so weeks ago, the Star Tribune did a story headlined “Minnesota state parks’ quiet time shouts, ‘Visit now.'” It talked about how there’s a “sharp drop-off in visitor traffic between October and early November.” Well not everybody is crazy about hiking in the winter. According to the article, the traffic at Whitewater State Park goes from 45,000 visitors in July to 2,600 in January. I have to admit it’s nice to seemingly have a park all to yourself. You can hear the wind whistle through the trees, the rustle of wildlife approaching, the crunch of leaves under your feet.

The article also says that after the first snow, it’s the “perfect time for animal tracking to notice little details.” In Garvin Park, we noticed some animal tracks, mainly deer. There was some snow on the trails we hiked, and there was plenty of mud.

We started on the Scout trail. Lots of dead, wet leaves on the path. The snow was patchy, and it came in handy when I’d get mud on my hiking shoes. I would drag my feet through the snow to somewhat clean them off. Boy does that mud weigh your feet down when you’re trying to plod down the trail. But I still had a smile on my face as we walked down by the water.

It didn’t take long before we looped the trail. So we walked across the horse camp area toward another trail. This one proved to have a little more mud.

As we trudged along, Ross found an abandoned glove and wondered if we would stumble upon its mate. Who knows how long that glove has been on the side of the trail. More mud and leaves had collected on the bottom of my shoes. Then came a portion of the trail that proved to be a little challenge for me. The combination of snow and mud caused me to slip, stumble and then fall. I reach back to catch myself and hurt my wrist (thankfully it didn’t get really injured). I also managed to get a little muddy.

For a little stretch, the trail was mostly snow, so I dragged my feet through, cleaning the mud off (yet again). When we got back to our parking spot, we went to work cleaning off our shoes so we wouldn’t dirty up Ross’ car too much. My shoes were wet, dirty and muddy — a successful and challenging early winter hike. And I survived.

I had set my shoes by the radiator to dry over the week. I checked on them Thursday night and saw that there was still a bit of dried mud on them. Gotta look up a method to clean them off — maybe there’s a WikiHow page for that.

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