Walking in Glencoe

Yesterday I walked a Looong 5K in Glencoe. This walk seemed much longer than 5K because there wasn't much to keep me entertained.

Glencoe is the county seat of McLeod County (think MCloud to pronounce it). McLeod is named for Martin McLeod who came to Minnesota from Montreal after immigrating there from Scotland. He was interested in fur trading, and the Minnesota Geographic Names book reports he did something quite remarkable. In 1836 he arrived at La Pointe, Wisconsin along Lake Superior. From there he walked during the autumn and early winter all the way to Pembina, a location then to be found on the Red River, a river that divides Minnesota and North Dakota. Imagine walking 600 miles during that season! McLeod is one of the founders of Glencoe, named after a historic valley in Scotland.

This walk also started from a Casey's gas station and convenience store. From there I walked down Hennepin Street for 8 blocks. I noticed a building along this street that had some interesting detail.

This is a bank building and had a clock showing the temperature was 67 (19 C). I had encountered rain sprinkles during my drive to Glencoe so was carrying my jacket in case I had to put it on quickly.

By the time I found the tree below I was getting warm in the sunshine combined with the exercise of walking.

My route took me into a city park and I was glad to find a picnic table, both to sit and rest as well as to have a place to stuff my jacket back into my backpack. The route map told me to look for a walkway into a wildlife area.

I

I was walking back and forth across Buffalo Creek. My names book is silent on how this creek got its name.

Then I came to fence as I had expected from the route map. But the route map said I would be seeing animals on the other side. This was such a large area and I walked a long distance without seeing anything other than grass that I wondered if something had changed since the route was designed. I got out my phone just to see where Google Maps would say where I was.

Kept walking with the fence on the left and finally glimpsed some animals inside the fenced area. Well, the animals spotted me too and one came running.

I stepped to the right to try to try to take a picture through the fince of other animals, and this little lady stepped to the right too. We did quite a dance.

Kept walking and found some goats. Loved the ears on this one.

 And then I found a sign for this place.

Next I continued through this area of park land and athletic fields. Found a memorial to the county's veterans.

 I was to note the name of the Glencoe high school teams from the stadium sign a checkpoint to prove I had really done this walk.

Thought Brewers was a strange name for a high school team.

The route back tracked on some of the same streets I had walked. I had "bookmarked" a coffee shop in my mind. Went into Gert and Emma's to have a coffee and muffin. There I noticed signs that indicated the name of the high school team is Panthers. I don't know who the Brewers are!

From this walk I only stamped my event, distance, and Minnesota county books. The other things were on a different 5K loop.  I had started late on this walk and had an evening meeting at home starting at 5:30, so skipped doing another 5K.