#56 - Old Mill State Park
Date Hiked: March 10th, 2025
Other Hikes That Day: Red River State Recreation Area, Lake Bronson State Park, Hayes Lake State Park
Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 2.42
At least when I was "hiking" through a suburban neighborhood, it was still warm enough for short sleeves. It wasn't quite the 62 degrees it was back home, but it was tolerable nonetheless.
By the time I got up to Old Mill State Park, winds that would've made Bill and Jo Harding send the tornado chaser fleet had dropped the temperature below 25 degrees, and I was grateful that Old Mill's Hiking Club trail was mercifully short, especially with two more to knock out on the day of my Northwest Corner excursion.
Unfortunately, I let the home conditions dictate my attire. A hoodie might've been enough for 25 degrees or for winds strong enough for a conversation on the Edmund Fitzgerald, but not both at the same time. While I hyperbolically call my quick completion of the Hiking Club a speedrun, this trail had me actually running to get it done quicker for practical reasons.
This would be the first park of the day, and not the last, where a road being closed off meant a ten minute-plus diversion. After leaving the comparatively thriving metropolis of East Grand Forks, Old Mill (at least by winter desolation standards) felt quiet and remote enough that the Langoliers might've been on the way imminently.
It's a pretty simple loop. Mostly it reminded me of wandering through a yard trail of a rural home with a back 40, which I don't say pejoratively. Toward one corner of the trail, there's a really nice view of a river, but that was the extent of anything that could be accurately described as scenery, at least at that time of the year.
The wind was strong enough by my time through the more densely forested portion of the trail that I had legitimate concerns about falling branches, or worse. My speed getting through the trail wasn't only because it made the frantic walk a tiny bit less frigid, but also because I didn't need a wooden Clothesline From Hell to make my day complete.
I feel like I'm being snarky about this hike, but obviously I enjoyed it more than a few others or you would've read about it already. I suppose I would've enjoyed it a lot more if it lived up to its name implications. When I saw the name "Old Mill," I had hopes for abandoned structures, or at least some refurbished vintage sites. Maybe the park has them, but the Hiking Trail didn't take me near them like Banning or Crow Wing, for instance. That's not a flaw of the trail, but cool abandoned shit always gets bonus points on my scale, which I denoted in the beginning as incredibly subjective explicitly for reasons like this one.
It's probably easier to not be snarky about this park if your face isn't painfully numb, or if you're not trying to get all four of the Northwest corner in one day. But, to be fair, I never described that decision as particularly logical or advisable.
Welp, you said you'd do a thing and you did it. Like you said, the park probably didn't intend for folx to hike it in that kind of weather, but you've pointed that out too.
ReplyDeleteYep, straight up about the fact that I'm describing what I did, but that isn't an endorsement of it being a good idea.
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