Blue Mounds State Park

Adam and I stopped in at the Blue Mounds State Park on our last trip back from Sioux Falls. If you're ever in the extreme southwestern corner of Minnesota, you really should take an hour or two to explore the park. We put it off for a long time, but it was such an unexpected treasure that I'm already looking forward to visiting again in the fall.

Blue Mounds is primarily prairie and grassland - my personal favorite among Minnesota's biomes - with an amazing quartzite cliff popping up out of nowhere. This is a place where you'd best keep your dog on a leash.

I can't tell you how many heart attacks I nearly had with Adam and TJ prancing along the cliff edge. Adam has no fear and TJ is just plain dumb, and I couldn't help silently wondering how my life would go on without those two since they were obviously bound to plummet to their deaths.

This is an example of a massive rock fall that, for all I know, could have occurred last week. Please note the very large fractures extending both horizontally and vertically throughout the cliff and the piles of broken rocks at the base. It still gives me chills.

We visited in the rainy early spring when the grasses and wildflowers were just getting started. By fall, the prairie will be a hotbed of horticultural activity, and I'll be there with guidebook in hand. Great birding, too. I lost count of how many eagles and other raptors we saw.

In addition to the rumors of the early Plains Indians stampeding bison off the cliff (likely untrue), there is also the mystery of this rock line extending throughout the park in such a direction that on the first day of spring and fall the sunrise and sunset are directly aligned to the stones. If we're not too busy next equinox, maybe we'll head back to verify that little tidbit of information. Either way, it's well worth the trip!