2022

Continuing our state park adventure 2 days in a row, we visited Minneopa State Park in Mankato. Although the area expected scattered showers in the morning, we figured it wouldn’t be any worse than the previous rainy hike in Fort Snelling State Park. This was our first visit to this state park. The distance dissuaded… Read more…

Celebrating the long 4th of July weekend, we made our first-ever visit to Fort Snelling State Park. Even though we frequently passed by this state park en route to the Twin Cities, we constantly reminded ourselves to visit it one day. Still, it quickly became an afterthought when we headed up there. So, this time,… Read more…

Given the splendid beautiful weekend weather, we took advantage of our Wisconsin state park annual pass by making our second-ever visit to Perrot State Park. Our first visit was in November 2015. We were awestruck by the grand view of the Mississippi River and the Trempealeau Mountain from the summit of Brady’s Bluff. We initially… Read more…

Continuing with our party-crashing trend, we decided to join our friends’ camping trip in Jay Cooke State Park. Although we hiked and snowshoed in this state park several times, this was our first camping trip since the iconic swinging bridge was destroyed by the raging floodwaters in 2012. This time, many friends joined this camping… Read more…

This year, we decided against planning big vacations until we finalized our imminent trip home. Like many folks living abroad, it has been at least 2.5 years since we visited our family members due to the pandemic. Our initial plan was to fly home this early summer. However, we decided against it to wait for… Read more…

On our 10th visit to the MN North Shore, we made our first-ever visit in the early spring season. We shied away from this time of the year in the past because spring is usually very wet, but we wanted to snowshoe for one last time before putting our gears away. It was unseasonably warm… Read more…

After spending a night at our friends’ place, we headed to Willow River State Park in Wisconsin for a hike. Considering the terrible driving condition, staying overnight was a wise choice because the evening rain turned icy, followed by multiple inches of snow accumulation. We tried to decide between this state park and Fort Snelling… Read more…

With spring just around the corner and the snow quickly melting in the southern part of Minnesota, we woke up from hibernation to stretch our legs. Our initial plan was to snowshoe in Frontenac State Park. However, we decided against it because it had only 3 inches of reported snow depth. So, we visited Whitewater… Read more…