Sibley State Park (Minnesota) 25-Oct-2022

We’re sorry Minnesota, we seem to have brought the drought with us from the West Coast. 😢 It’s now D1 or higher over much of the state. The air temperature has also been fluctuating wildly, from 78℉ (25℃) over the weekend to 35℉ (1.6℃) this morning. Despite the lower temperatures, no rain means no snow, which means that state parks that close their Hiking Club trails for use as ski trails haven’t done so yet. Which means we could hike a few more parks before winter finally arrives. 🥶

Sibley State Park is the closest park to the Twin Cities that we hadn’t yet hiked and is near a hamlet with a tangential connection to where my mom was born. So Sibley was our target for today. The weather was typically capricious – cold, blustery, and overcast until the last 15 minutes of the hike. Then the clouds quickly parted, the sun shone through, temperatures rose, and all was forgiven weather-wise. Yeah, right. 🤨

The annual Minnesota Educators Association (MEA) break was last Thursday and Friday and many of those folks found their way to Sibley for the weekend. The park office was open – so we were able to trinket-up before starting our hike – but the park staff were still in kind of a daze after managing the MEA hoards. So we learned about another Minnesota tradition but were glad we missed it – we had the trail to ourselves today. 😉

This late in the Fall, most of the trees were bare and the landscape exhibited a color palette stuffed with every conceivable shade of brown. Only near the end of the hike – when the sun finally emerged – did a few other colors pop.

The literal and figurative high point in this park is Mount Tom – at 1,375 feet (419 m), it’s the highest USGS named point in the park and for a good ways around. The stout stone and wood tower stuck on its top provides expansive views out over the glacially altered, lightly rolling landscape.

Mount Tom is near the top of the Hiking Club loop and from here we made our way south, past Little Mount Tom and Badger Hill, to the shores of Lake Andrew.

Our hike was a 4 mile (6.4 km), 500 foot (152 m) of gain, undulating loop over and through the glacially formed hills and valleys of the Alexandria Moraine Complex and past Lake Andrew. Despite the lack of cooperation from the weather (until the end 🙄), it was a good outing. We enjoyed finally doing some hiking in conditions cold enough to qualify as Fall, on the cusp of winter, weather. 😊

Now wearing sunglasses 😎🙄, we left the park and had a nice lunch 🥪😋 at the Sweet River Café in New London. Afterward, we drove back via Highway 23 so we could pass through the little hamlet of Hawick, Minnesota.

Originally named Havig, it was renamed after Hawick, Scotland by a local railroad superintendent. My mom was born and raised in the Scottish one and came to the U.S. after WW2 to marry my father, an Army Air Corps officer. Granted it’s a tenuous connection but still find the many we seem to have with Minnesota a touch eerie. Way fewer than 6 degrees of separation… 🥓😁

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