2020 09 18 - State Park, Myre-Big Island

We had driven to IA for our work today and decided to stop for a walk on the return trip. We end up at Myre-Big Island State Park near Albert Lea MN. The park is about 2 miles from I-35 on all blacktop roads.

Once in the park, there is some dirt road to get to the parking area on the Big Island. The parking area here is ... big. I was going to estimate when I was there but forgot. So as a guess I will say that this parking area would hold about 50 cars. I think there are other parking area's also, so much bigger than the last state park we were at.

We head down a trail we've been on before. There is only a few feet of cement walk as far as the restrooms. From there it is a dirt trail as wide as a four wheeler.

A lot of the path is about 10-15 feet above the lake level with a relatively steep drop to the lake. We stay to the lake side of the island as far as we can. Then we get to above picture.

Trail closed. No warning. We were just out for a walk but I think it would be nice for those on a limited time walk or for those that only have limited energy.

We just backtrack until the trail split and followed the inland trail.

On the way back to the car we do find a narrow blacktop trail. We only followed it a short ways so we don't know how long that part of the trail was. (But it should say on the map)

Our walk today was a little under 40 minutes. At that point we were at the car and have plans to walk more this weekend so we decided not to push it.

Walking somewhere less than a mile and my wife's hip starts to bother her. And I now have an issue with my new Red Wing shoes that start to bother me about the same time. So less than an hour it is.

As we are driving out of the park we see one deer about 30 feet into the woods. That is the only noticeable wildlife we saw at this park.

Before we head to a motel, we are doing a weekend of walks, we stop at a cemetery. I had thought this cemetery had about 500 people, more like 2,000. We spent another 40 minutes walking this cemetery before we found the people we were looking for.

So, two - 40 minute walks today.