Minnesota Hiking Club #52 - Lake Bemidji State Park

Minnesota Hiking Club

#52 - Lake Bemidji State Park

Date Hiked: March 2nd, 2025

Other Hikes That Day: Glendalough State Park, La Salle Lake State Recreation Area, Itasca State Park

Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 2.50

I still don't know what inspired me to head here after I drove the whole way to Glendalough for my first password/stamp combination of the day, but since Itasca was the muse behind it, it only made sense to hit this one first and work my way back down. Thankfully, La Salle Lake wasn't the final stop on this particular collection of hikes, or that might've made the #67 entry even more awkward. 

"The dead marshes. Yes, that is what they are called. Look, there's Lester Nygaard and Wish.com Malvo. Don't follow the lights. Also, there was a hike." That's a direct quote from my Passport, and if you haven't seen Two Towers and season one of Fargo, just pretend I made an allusion to something you've enjoyed many times. But being in Bemidji, the main setting for the latter, and given that this hike is through a bog, I couldn't help but be referential. 

This wasn't my first bog hike of the speedrun, though interestingly both involved walking on a boardwalk covered in ice. Lake Bemidji's Hiking Club trail had a road crossing though, and that was an interesting sensory experience with ice spikes on, as was hiking with clamp-ons while wearing short sleeves on March 2nd this far north. 

Picking up a few Geocaches along the way while amusing myself with thoughts of the aforementioned pop culture crossover none of us ever knew we needed, I had a great appreciation for the effort, energy, and detail they put into the information along the bog walk. It's not often a place can effectively combine facts of a geological, historical, and cultural context, as well as detail the types of plants and animals native to such a landform in such a comparatively short amount of a hike. Granted, most of those plants and animals were not readily visible at the time of my hike, but given the amount of bugs one would expect in such a location, I'm perfectly fine with using my imagination to fill in the blanks left by snow and silence. 

The Hiking Club trail for Lake Bemidji State Park feels oddly separate from... well, the namesake lake itself, but also the park. "Enter this park, see this massive lake, look at all the activities there are to do... now hang a left and go away if you want your password." I'm sure many others do the Hiking Club trail and then partake in other activities, but you've obviously gathered by now, that's not what I was up to for this project. I just found it interesting, as the other Lake <name> State Parks on this list involved hiking around said named lakes, but mixing it up is not a bad thing. 

I'll talk more about bog walks when I get to Big Bog State Recreation Area later in this list, but I'm grateful these areas have been preserved, despite the best efforts of those who seek to break things and ruin them for everybody.