Plateau Rock Trail

 

The Plateau Rock Trail is the reason why I wanted to start this blog.  There is zero information from the park on these trails.  Hearing the name Plateau Rock, I thought it would be an awesome view from the top.  A giant rock that you could stand on or something like that.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  This trail is extremely difficult.  It is straight up and there are no steps or even switchbacks to make this easier.  It was slippery and steep.  Drop off on one side, rock face on the other side.  I probably should have turned around, but I just had to get to the top of it.  Surely after all that it would at least have an awesome view, right?  Nope.  Tree cover was too thick to see anything.  The trail does follow along the top of the bluff for a little bit. I was really hoping that there would be another, hopefully easier way down, but no such luck.  At the end of this trail, we found a geo cache stuck in a dead tree.  The boys were fascinated by this.  The way down was even scarier than the way up, but we kept it slow and we all made it down safely.  I do not recommend this trail especially if you have young kids with you.

We also did parts of the Beaver Creek Trail since it connects with Plateau Rock.  This one is a very nice trail.  that follows Beaver Creek.  There are lots of bridges that cross the creek and the boys loved to stop at these and throw rocks in the river.  I don't quite get the fascination of this, but they could spend hours on these bridges throwing rocks, leaves, and sticks in the rushing water. 

I'm hoping that we will get to do another park in August sometime. I have already made reservations for Banning State Park for Labor Day weekend. I'm so excited about this.  Banning Park is so far my absolute favorite park in Minnesota. 

Steep Rock Trail

My boys on one of the bridges on Steep Rock Trail

View up the blufftop from the bridge

Toad found on the trail

View from the top

On the trail

Trail head

This trail is located in Beaver Valley Creek State Park in Calendonia, MN. It is only .6 miles. There are two places you can start this trail. One is from the campground, which is where we started it from. The other is a short walk from the parking lot, across the suspension bridge. I would not rate this trail as difficult. It can be steep, but it is short and easily doable by most people. The views are stunning from the top and even from that altitude you can still hear the rushing water of Beaver Creek far below. My 5 year old son had no difficulty with this trail at all. As you can see from the picture, my 2 year old would rather ride on Daddy's back.

There was a lot of wildlife on this trail. We saw several chipmunks and two toads. My 5 year old desperately wanted to take one of the toads home with him. Fortunately, we were able to convince him that the forest was its home and it would rather live here than with us. Overall a short and sweet trail. Nothing too exciting on this one, but if you're looking for an easy trail to do in the area, this would be one of them.

Hole-in-Rock Trail

The trailhead from the tent only campsite.

View from the top

 

This trail is in the Beaver Valley Creek State Park.

I'm not sure if we were supposed to see an actual hole in the rock. If we were, we missed it. I think we took a wrong turn though.  We started at the trail head in the middle of the tent only campsite.  When we got to the top of this, the trail split, but there were no directions as to which way we should go, so we took the right split.  It probably didn't help that I had left my map at the campsite.  At any rate, the way we went is not very well traveled. The views were nice, but if I go back, we will be taking the left split and not the right. The trail ended at the group campsite so we walked back through the tent only campsite to get back to ours.