Mississippi and St. Croix National Rivers

Travel Dates: October 12 and 13, 2011

Last week, after my geology conference in Minneapolis came to a close, I stuck around for one more whole free day to check out some "local" sites. My primary goal was to get out of the city and see all I could of two National Parks: Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. Both are river parks and the main activities are river-based: canoeing, boating, kayaking, etc. But during this time of year not many people are out canoeing, and you surely cannot experience much of the river by canoe in one day. This brings up the biggest internal struggle I have as I try and visit each of the National Parks: What counts as "being to" a specific park? My dad thinks that just driving through one of the parks counts as visiting it, but I tend to be of the mind that says you have to do something in the park that you cannot do anywhere else. So my challenge in visiting these two river parks was finding enough to do at each of the parks to experience part of the nature and culture they protect while remaining on land. Success was not far away.

The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area protects 72 miles of the upper reaches of the famous waterway. Luckily the city of Minneapolis is situated right on the river and has parks within its boundaries that have neat things to see all along its length. On Wednesday night, Jojo and I returned to the city's waterfront to the Mill Ruins Park, two blocks away from her apartment. These are the ruins of some of Minneapolis's oldest mills, including the ruins of the old Gold Medal Flour mill. Spanning the width of the Mississippi River at this park is the Stone Arch Bridge, an old railway bridge that has now been converted to a bike path and pedestrian bridge. Wednesday was a rainy, rainy day in the Twin Cities and though the rain stopped for a little bit, the clouds hung low over the Minneapolis skyline. Jojo and I walked across the bridge, and then re-explored the ruins down below the locks on the Mississippi.

The old Gold Medal Flour building along the Mississippi Riverfront. The ruins next to it have been preserved and now provide the walls of a back courtyard to the Mill City Museum, where the Minneapolis Historical Society is based.

The North Star Blankets mill sign lights up the forefront of the Minneapolis Skyline

Looking back to Minneapolis from the middle of the Stone Arch Bridge

Big locks along the Mississippi. Because these locks are within the confines of the National River, you can go canoeing through the lock free of charge, courtesy of the National Park Service!

Stone Arch Bridge

Looking over into one of the old underground waterways beneath the city. The river was diverted through these waterways to power the mills and now there is a huge network of them under the city.

Old mill structures at the base of the Stone Arch Bridge

 

Old girders at Mill Ruins Park with the new I-35W bridge illuminated in the background. The new I-35W bridge is the replacement bridge for the one that collapsed back in 2007.

Jojo and I decided to take some pictures together, but with my DSLR camera, it was tricky.

We managed to get the obligatory jumping shots, though.

We got the one closer to the wall, but I thought it would be cool to come up a little bit and get a jumping shot with our shadows in the background. Our timing was less than optimal.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, Jojo had to work the next day and left me to explore more of the Mississippi National River by myself. So after she left for work, I put a few things together, got in my car, and was on my way. I knew I had a lot of ground to cover but I didn't really know where I was going, so the first place I stopped was at the Coon Rapids Dam on the north side of Minneapolis. I drove across and parked on the east side of the river to check it out. Too bad for me, the visitor center there was closed and knowing this might be my only chance to get my National Park Passport Stamp for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, I grabbed my jacket and camera and hoofed it on over across the dam. The dam was built in 1913 at this location because the river was wide and shallow. Early settlers were known to have seen racoons scurrying out into the river to catch food - hence, the name: Coon Rapids Dam. There are very few places where you can actually walk across dams of this magnitude, so I was sure to give it a go. The dam flooded the river behind it, creating a 9-foot fall over the dam, which was used to harness the water to create power. Though the dam itself is no longer producing power, it sure is using power to remain in a functioning condition. While the dam was initially controlled by Tainter Gates (see below), all but one of these gates have been replaced by rubber inflatable walls that control the flow of water over the dam.

Coon Rapids Dam. The gate closest to the forefront of the photo is the one remaining Tainter Gate, the rest are inflated rubber walls.

 

Some fall colors were in peak season on the west side of the dam

One of the Tainter Gates was on display on the east side of the dam. The gate rotates on the pin seen in the forefront and the big curved metal surface would face upstream. Lumber was a big trade in the area when these dams were built, so blocking the river with a dam while still allowing logs to freely flow through was tricky. The Tainter Gates would pivot up and down to allow water to flow underneath of it and allow logs to pass through the dam, too. The curved surface allowed the pressure of the water to help raise and lower the gate with minimal human effort. Nevertheless, humans still had to crank the gates open and shut by hand and 100 rotations of the crank only opened the gate one inch!

Osprey nest perched on top of a power tower outside the west dam's Visitor Center. I learned that while ospreys and eagles are competitors, they have a mutual agreement to stay out of the others' territories.

 

To ensure I paid my dues and did something in the park, I took a little stroll through a grassy field under a stand of maple trees along the west bank of the river and you could see the robins flying all over the place, gathering materials to make their nests, or bathing in puddles, or pulling worms, or whatever else robins do. It was fun to see such activity!

Looking down the mighty Mississippi River from the middle of Coon Rapids Dam. A heron rookery was established on the downstream end of the island in the middle of the photo here after a tornado struck the northern suburbs of Minneapolis in May of this year. A rescue effort moved the disturbed nests to this island, but many of the young herons were abandoned. Earlier in the season, though, herons could be seen actively coming to and going from their nests on the island.

So, back in my car, I trended northwest from Minneapolis toward the small town of St. Croix Falls. The St. Croix National Scenic Riverway was the first river to be protected by Congress and placed under the umbrella of the National Park Service. Again, being a river park, I wasn't sure what exactly there was to do if I wasn't going to spend time on the river, so I thought the best place to find out would be the park's main visitor center at St. Croix Falls. The drive out there was beautiful and the road wound around all sorts of small lakes with houses built up all around them (not unlike the movie, Fargo - minus the woodchipper!). But once you get to the rim of the St. Croix River, you immediately descend into the gorge to St. Croix Falls. The namesake of the town is unfortunately drowned beneath a hydropower dam that is still in use, but at one time the St. Croix River would descent 55 feet in less than six miles, over a series of rapids. Those rapids are now underwater, but oh they must have been a sight to see, and maybe when it is no longer cost-effective to have that dam in place, they will remove it and expose the falls again!

I was a little out of luck with the St. Croix River because there really isn't much to do unless you are paddling down the river. But I did have a great talk with the woman running the desk in the visitor center. I noticed that on the park map, there was a zebra mussel control point further downstream. At the point, no boats are allowed upstream on the river. Sure, boats can just be transported by car upstream, but she said that they really trust the boaters to wash their boats thoroughly before doing so. Why all the fuss? I wondered. Well, the St. Croix River is home to 42 native mussel species, all of which are still in tact and any zebra or quagga mussel populations upstream of the checkpoint are checked and removed. The woman at the front desk is on the diving team that monitors the native mussel populations. The cool thing about mussels is that they affix themselves to hard surfaces and filter nutrients out of the water. Their offspring obviously are small and are not able to feed in the same way as the adults, so the larval mussels attach themselves to the gills of specific species of fish and collect nutrients as they pass through the gills. Once the larval mussels are too big to survive in this fashion, they drop from the gills and affix themselves to the nearest hard surface. In order for the park to effectively manage their native mussel populations, they help them out by collecting larval mussels and bring them to a laboratory where they attach them to lab fish. Once the mussels are grown, the dive team will restore the adult mussels to the natural river system! I may not have been able to do a whole lot in this park, but I did learn a bunch. It's not to say I didn't do anything, because I did take a little walk down an interpretive trail to an overlook above the St. Croix Falls hydroelectric dam.

St. Croix Falls dam and the St. Croix Falls buried somewhere beneath the water

A sculpture depicting the River Spirit

Though there wasn't much to see on land in the park, it was interesting to know that at this spot along the river in 1886 one of the nation's largest log jams in history was recorded. A log jam doesn't sound like much, but in 1886 over 150 million feet of timber was stuck behind the St. Croix dalles. Because the local economy was tied to the fate of this lumber, for as long as the logs were jammed the sawmills downriver saw no business and the workers had to way of providing for their families. The communities upriver, which relied on goods being transported to them by the river, starved due to the lack of supplies and food. During this particularly bad log jam, the men trying to break it up also had to watch out for "jill-poke"-ing logs - basically tree-sized rockets, fueled by increasing pressure from the river. A photo on the National Park's website shows the extent of the 1886 log jam.

On my way out, the woman at the desk did mention that downriver is a private historic site called the

Arcola Mills that was free to the public during a month-long partnership between the National Park Service and the Arcola Mills Foundation. The mills were the first on the St. Croix River, and while they were quickly run out of business by larger mills, the original mill building and furnace are still standing, though in desperate need of repairs! It wasn't the most enthralling place I've ever been, but it gave me something more to do along the River.

The original saw mill at the Arcola Mills historic site

Antique trinkets at the mill. Notice the tree-bark siding of the building!

Railway trestle traversing the St. Croix River

The afternoon was catching up to me and I wanted to get back to Minneapolis by 5pm when Jojo got out of work because the two of us had one more site to visit. BUT along my way back into Minneapolis, I tried visiting one more site: Fort Snelling. When Minnesota was first settled, this area was one of the gateways out into the wild prairie and while there are multiple stands of trees throughout the region, early accounts by soldiers seem to portray this whole area as a grassland, which is very interesting to think about. Fort Snelling was built at the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Minnesota River, a confluence that the native Dakota people thought to be the center of their creation above which was the center of their universe. Naturally, the white settlers from the east came in the mid 1800s and saw the bounteous land and wanted it. Treaties were written that would give the Dakota's land to the US and they would receive money, supplies, and a reservation in return. In typical US fashion of the time, none of the provisions were given to the Dakota people and they were robbed of their land. So they fought back, and after the Dakota war of 1862, hundreds of Dakota people were interned at Fort Snelling where many died of disease or were brutalized at the hands of the US soldiers. In one of the Dakota uprisings, 303 Dakota people were charged with the murder of innocent US civilians and each person was unfairly tried in court, and while President Lincoln saved the lives many of the tried Dakota, 38 were publicly hanged, and one who was sentenced to be hanged was given reprieve.

Fort Snelling

I got back into Minneapolis just before Jojo got off of work so I met her at her office building, we grabbed some Chipotle burrito bowls and hopped on the Minneapolis light-rail train, and took it south to another park along the Mississippi, called Minnehaha Park. Right in Minnehaha park are the Minnehaha Falls. Jojo and I descended down to the bottom of the falls where we enjoyed our burrito bowls and then explored Minnehaha Creek down to where it joins the Mississippi River.

This house is supposed to be the first wooden-frame structure west of the Mississippi

Minnehaha Falls from above

Jojo and I down below Minnehaha Falls

Cairns built in the middle of Minnehaha Creek

Blue Heron in Minnehaha Creek stalking its prey!

Minnehaha Falls at night, lit up by the floodlights at the rim of the falls

Jojo and I hopped back on the light-rail and took it back into town where we met up with our friend Andrew and waited for Jojo's boyfriend to show up from the airport.

I definitely feel like I got a good taste of both the Mississippi and St. Croix River parks, but I am by no means done with them. When I left St. Croix Falls there was an old paddle-wheel boat that was running tours of the St. Croix Dalles, but I didn't have time for it then. Along both rivers, I would love to take some weekend canoe trips along the courses of the rivers, or even a really long canoe trip traversing the entire courses of them! But again, I only had one day to visit them, which is surely not enough time at all! I can't wait to get back and really experience them for the reason they were made parks in the first place: the rivers themselves!

Minneapolis - The City of Lakes

Trip Dates: October 8-14, 2011

Last week brought me to the upper reaches of the Mississippi River - specifically, Minneapolis - for the annual Geological Society of America's annual Fall meeting. The past two years the meeting has been in Denver, Colorado and Portland, Oregon - both cities I had not really spent much time in before the meeting - and Minneapolis was not any different. The only time I had ever been to the Twin Cities was on one of numerous connecting flights out at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with never any time to get into the city.

The city is absolutely one of the coolest cities in America. No, it's not overly gigantic like Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles; rather, it is accessible, walkable, and friendly, but it still has all of the amenities of a city four times its size! One of the coolest things about Minneapolis is that it has one of the world's largest continuous networks of indoor walkways connecting nearly every building in the downtown area. In the winter Minneapolis is hit with arguably some of the nation's coldest temperatures as arctic blasts of air come streaming into the US from Canada. This walkway, called the Skyway, allows anyone to get anywhere they need to go downtown without having to go outside! How I walked away from Minneapolis without getting any of my own photos of the Skwy, I'm not sure!

While most of Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region is covered by glacial till or glacial outwash, left behind by the Laurentide Ice Sheet as it started its retreat ~20,000 years ago, this part of Wisconsin was left unglaciated (driftless zone) and as a result, many rock outcrops are still seen along the sides of the road.

Downtown Minneapolis

Skyway bridge in downtown Minneapolis (Photo: Wikipedia)

Being from west Michigan, though, the only trick about Minneapolis is getting there - it is one long schlep down around the southern shore of Lake Michigan and then up through Chicago and through Wisconsin. I thought that once I was in Wisconsin I was pretty much there, but when I checked how much longer I had to drive, I realized I still had another 5 hours to go - I was only halfway there! But the drive through Wisconsin here was beautiful and I was surprised to see rock outcrops still standing proud along the sides of the road. The drive is especially beautiful in the Fall when the leaves are changing colors and on I-94 between Madison, Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota you see acres upon acres of small farm fields nestled right in the valleys between rocky hilltops. It was absolutely one of the most enjoyable car rides I've been on in a very very long time!

I finally got to Minneapolis around 1:00pm (I left Muskegon at 4:30am!), parked my car across the street from my friend, Jojo's apartment, and met her on the corner. Jojo and I have been very close friends since we survived our French classes at the University of Michigan together. Jojo just moved to Minneapolis to start a job and was more than happy for me to share her apartment for the week while I was at my conference. Well, we dropped my things off in her apartment and we went out and had lunch at a Thai restaurant around the corner and did a little daytime walk through the Mill Ruins Park along the Mississippi River. Minneapolis, like all other midwestern cities, thrived off of industry, and its position on the Mississippi River enabled it to be a boomtown of many industries, but primarily lumber and flour. In fact, the old mills of the Gold Medal Flour and Pillsbury companies are still intact, and regional monuments to the lumber era are preserved in the nearby Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway.

That first Saturday afternoon in the city, I quickly ran to the Convention Center - on the opposite side of downtown, but still only 20 minutes walking - to sign in for my meeting and then Jojo and I met up with Laura and Josh, some other Michigan friends, to watch an all-too-nerve-racking football game against Northwestern. From the Michigan Bar (Smalley's) we rode across the river where our friend Andrew met up with us at The Bulldog so I could experience a local favorite: truffle tots!

It wasn't all that late, but I'd been up a very long time and had to get up early for my conference, so our group of friends left The Bulldog and dropped us back off at Jojo's apartment. Since the conference started on Sunday, Jojo had the day off but decided to walk with me toward the conference center and she went into work to do some work. I spent the next few hours sitting in all sorts of interesting Geology-related talks. Around lunchtime, though, I met up with my friend, Lee from Burlington whose advisor was also mine, and she and I met Jojo at a great little crepe restaurant for lunch. It was amazing that the weather was so nice this late in the year, but everyone was enjoying it, wearing their short-sleeves and sunglasses. Beautiful.

There was nothing pressing that Lee or I needed to be back at the conference, so Jojo gave us a little walking tour along Nicolette Mall - a walking mall for pedestrians and buses only - over to Loring Park and across the highway to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden where the famous "Cherry on a Spoon" sculpture can be found. The park is not gigantic, but it is full of really neat pieces of sculpture art. Though I'm not sure what or why the connection, but many of the pieces of art there are done by artists who also have very similar pieces of sculpture work on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. Needless to say, the three of us had a lot of fun taking silly photos and wondering what was the motivation behind some of the sculptures.

Oh how I love the fun perspective photo shoots!

 

Jojo enjoying some air time

Lee having no trouble dangling

Eventually, though, Lee and I had to get back to the convention center to hear a few more talks and left Jojo to go back to work. The next few days were very similar. Jojo had to work, so we would get up early around the same times and then meet up for dinner later on and go out for drinks at fun bars or restaurants such as the Eagle Bolt Bar (fun sports bar), Dancing Ganesha (great Wednesday night "Date Night" specials), and Crooked Pint Ale House (delicious cheese curds). On Tuesday night, though, the University of Michigan Geology Department - sorry, the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, now (don't get me started) - hosted their annual Alumni reception. Jojo came along with me and crashed the party where we ran into our friend Jess who also came out to Geology Camp with us. We hob-nobbed with the Michigan Geology crew for a while and when things started to wind down we headed out to The Barrio, a nice little Tequila Bar with good food for a late-night snack.

Most of our evenings, when not eating, were spent just hanging out at Jojo's apartment where we had a lot of time to catch up with each others' lives and tell stories and jokes and just have a good time together. On Wednesday, the weather turned a little bit nasty but that night Jojo and I headed back down to the Mill Ruins Park during a break in the weather for some good old fashioned night-time photoshoots in the ruins, but I will save those for my next post since the Mill Ruins are within the confines of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area - which deserves its own post.

The conference finished on Wednesday, so on Thursday while Jojo was at work, I took the day to drive around and explore the area, checking two more National Parks off my list: Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway - again, I'll detail  these in their own post soon. That night, however, Jojo's boyfriend and my friend from the Michigan Men's Glee Club, Abe, arrived in town and we briefly chatted before going to bed because I was leaving town that next morning but not before we had breakfast at one of the Twin Cities' most famous breakfast joints.

We got up early on Friday and I drove the three of us over to St. Paul where we had a filling breakfast of typical diner fare at Mickey's Diner, a 50s-style art deco rail car which made famous movie appearances in The Mighty Ducks, Jingle all the Way, and my favorite, A Prairie Home Companion which airs numerous live old-time radio shows from the Fitzgerald Theater, just kiddy-corner from the diner. Luckily, the table that was featured in the closing scene of that movie was open so we enjoyed our breakfast there before I drove them back to Minneapolis, dropped them off, and was on my way back to West Michigan.

The drive back took a while longer than the drive to Minneapolis, but that was because I stopped at yet another National Park - Effigy Mounds National Monument - in Iowa since the chances I'd be back there anytime soon were slim. But more about that soon.

Minneapolis was a fantastic city - one I felt comfortable in, enjoyed my time in, loved my friends there, and really hope to make it back many more times (if not get a job there!). It's a city that can really be enjoyed in a short period of time, but really deserves more time than any passer-through will probably give it.