V is for Vadnais

Monday was a spring day -- today is back to winter! For my volkssporting activities I'm doing books about walking A-Z is cities or towns anywhere in the United States and A-Z in Minnesota locations. Thus V is for Vadnais -- in this case, more properly Vadnais Heights. This suburb and a lake within are named for John Vadnais who made land claims here in 1846.

Information about this walk is kept at the Shoreview Community Center. After getting myself organized I got a cup of coffee and read for awhile, hoping the day would warm just a bit. By the time I left around 11 AM, the weather had warmed to shirt-sleeve temperatures -- perfect.

I drove to a park in Vadnais Heights -- apparently easy to do. A bit of Internet research reveals that 12% of this St. Paul suburb is composed of water and this 8 mile square area has 14 parks!

I had waited to do this walk until this time, hoping the snow would be melted from the trails. This is what greeted me, however, at the beginning.

 This appeared to be a snowbank created by pushing snow from the parking lot. It was easy to detour around this and the rest of the trail was in quite good condition -- only in one place did I have to walk through mud.

Soon I was walking along Sucker Lake.

 On the other side of the trail was a wet land and the frogs were very noisy, accompanied by the call of red-wing black birds which are very noisy, too. I thought this it was probably a very good idea to this walk BTB (Before the Bugs!).

I probably walked about 20 minutes along the lake and then found another parking lot. The route map directed me to walk across the street and enter a forest area. Learned this is the Allison Forest, named after a University of Minnesota forestry professor who championed saving forest lands through much of this career. Then I back-tracked to the first park, retraced some of my steps back to Sucker Lake and turned right on a trail. This took me across the bottom of the lake and then along the other side of the lake. This path was leaf-covered. The temperature and sunshine were just right. It was a lovely walk.

During this section I walked across a little bridge. The view is lovely.

 
In about 20 minutes I found myself along a city street, following on the side walk for just a bit, and then I could see my car in the parking lot. A very nice 5 K walk.