The St. Croix

We went up towards Taylors Falls today to a special little nursery called Landscape Alternatives.  They specialized in native plants.  J goes up about once a year in search of new plants for his native prairie project.  This was my first trip.  I was greatly impressed with the eye-catching lupine & prairie smoke at the entrance in front of the barn.  (see extra photos)

After the nursery, we went up to Interstate Park which turned out to seriously satisfy the geology geek in me.  Apparently the St. Croix river valley that runs between Minnesota and Wisconsin was originally created over a billion years ago when lava flowed through the region from the volcanoes caused by the Midcontinent Rift System.  Minnesota and Wisconsin could have been different continents!  Now the only rift that remains is between Packers and Vikings fans.  Anyway, after the last glacial period, water flowed through the area and washed away sediment, but could not cut through the lava-caused basalt rock.  Long story short (well, as short as my stories get) the water found an old joint in the basalt.  Water was forced through in torrents and, in places, the sediment was jammed into whirlpools or eddies.  The force of this action was so strong that the rocks actually created various sized holes in the basalt rock.  The process acted like a reverse rock polisher.  The larger sedimentary rocks smoothed the sides of the holes.  Interstate Park has the largest volume of glacial holes in the world.  In the extra photos, you can see M curled up in a tiny one, but the "Bottomless Pit" is 10 feet (3 m) wide and 60 feet (18 m) deep!  There are stairs going down into it! 

However, this park isn't all just holes.  The vistas along the forest trail are breathtaking.  The trail, which is just over a mile from parking lot to parking lot, is speckled with wildflowers jutting out from a magnitude of rock formations.  E could leave no rock unclimbed (see extra photos).  We hiked to the end, then J ran back for the car while the kids explored the rocks and potholes.  Then we drove into town and had foam top rootbeer, shakes, and an assortment of fried foods at The Drive In.