Minnesota Hiking Club #57 - Rice Lake State Park

Minnesota Hiking Club

#57 - Rice Lake State Park

Date Hiked: January 1st, 2025

Other Hikes That Day: Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park, Sakatah Lake State Park

Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 2.33

The concept of New Years means absolutely nothing to me. New Year's Eve, as Will McAvoy once called it, is a celebration of "the world's biggest non-event." That said, the prior two years, I'd used it as an opportunity to travel out of state, as the prices are low and the crowds are smaller, presuming you're not headed to one of those aforementioned non-event celebrations. While I wanted to continue my loosely-defined tradition, particularly with whom I spent that time, it wasn't possible this time around. So I spent my energy elsewhere, grateful I had something other than the void on which to focus. If it's not obvious, I was not having a good time at this point. 

While, on that New Year's Day, I couldn't use the habits of most for ease of interstate travel, I was awake and on the road early to pursue my first trilogy of parks. Nerstrand-Big Woods, Rice Lake, and Sakatah Lake form a triangle south of the Twin Cities, and this was a great opportunity to get some stamps and miles in. I wasn't pursuing the one-season completion yet, but the fulfillment I got out of this day's pursuit did a lot to endear me to the concept. 

Rice Lake was the second of three hikes that day, and all three of the triangle were comparable in terms of length and scenery. There were several unexpected occurrences during this short middle trek. For one, I saw another person, which in itself was surprising, given the habits of most the previous night. Second, while many Hiking Club navigational and password signs had gotten recent upgrades (that I now know in retrospect), I nearly missed Rice Lake's password sign due to its different color scheme, as well as half the letters being faded out. Fortunately, and I say that only for the ease of decipherability, this park has the least imaginative password one could possibly conjure, though I did confer with Geocaching Bronco's page just to be sure. 

Third, and most notably, the silence of my solitude became scored with an otherworldly soundtrack. While I learned that noises like this emanate from the winds in the woods, it's easy for me to comprehend why others might think that they're about to visit the Red Room. I got the noise on camera just to make sure it wasn't my imagination, and so that if BOB decided we were about to have some kind of unpleasant encounter, I might remember not to put on the jade ring. It's always good to have a plan. 

It was cold, it was remote, and the views weren't especially noteworthy. But, aside from wondering "is it future?" or "is it past?", the peace in the solitude was a minor comfort to my soul at a time where I was wishing hard that I was somewhere very far away. Most of my prior athletic experience was in team sports, but conversely, putting in miles on the trail never requires reliance on anyone.