2023 10 14 - Wild River State Park - Almelund MN

Picture: Main entrance sign.

It had been raining for over 24 hours and just ended this AM so we wanted a place with paved trails. Being the weekend, we wanted to be a little further out of town than our three closest parks.

Another reason we wanted to get further from town was people. It may be the last good weekend to be out and to see the fall colors. The closer parks advise arriving before noon to find a place to park. We hadn't looked ahead of time, but the Wild River park had a marathon today so there had been plenty of people here also.

This park is about an hour from home and my wife wasn't wanting to spend the whole day in the car, today. GPS had us avoiding Taylor's Falls so we did. We got off the main road and onto the county roads. Kind of like when I am 'just following my nose' to get somewhere.

Our annual park pass had expired so we first stopped at William O'Brian State Park to get a permit. Some of the smaller parks to not have full time staff at the entrance.

Wild River has 'About 14 miles of beginner trails, 16 miles of intermediate trails, and 3 miles of advanced trails.' Of that, it looks like about 2 miles is paved but one non-park website lists it as 3 miles paved.

Because of the resent rain, we stated on the paved trail. You can either start at the visitors center or the trail head and the two trails merge to become the old logging trail. The trail is mostly flat, wide and well kept. We could see a lot of down trees that had had to be cleared from the summer storms.

Today we stop at the visitors center. The photo below is from the visitors center and the St Croix River can be seen in the distance.

When we arrived we saw signs for a 'run.' but didn't know if it was water or land. When we were walking on the trail we came to a road and there was someone waiting for the runners. So we heard a little about the run. And that the last two runners, he had a name for them, had stopped at the prior stop 20 minutes ago but still hadn't gotten to him.

When we got to the end of the trail they were still cleaning up after the event. Heard someone say that they had 64 runners today.

That is where we turned around. The map looks like the paved trail goes for another quarter to half mile beyond that point.

On the way up to the park it looked like the last of the clouds were clearing and even saw some blue sky while at the park. But we also had some mist. And it was cold, but we didn't get wet enough to get a chill.

After we left the park, we stopped at a couple of cemeteries. On the road to the Sunrise cemetery there were State Parks signs so we had to find out why.

You can access the state park north of Sunrise at a place called Sunrise Landing. It looks like there used to be a ferry crossing. There is parking and a boat launch and Sunrise river empties into the St Croix River right there.

Picture: View from visitors center.

$ Park pass is required.