Minnesota Hiking Club
#9 - Banning State Park
Date Hiked: January 31st, 2025
Other Hikes That Day: Moose Lake State Park
Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 4.17
The autistic special interest trap nets me a higher score yet again! Regardless, Banning State Park is really freaking cool!
Excuse me one moment though... ABANDONED BUILDINGS! STACKS OF GIANT ROCKS! ABANDONED MINING STUFF! COOL BRIDGES! ... Okay, we now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Somehow it was t-shirt weather at the end of January. I certainly wasn't going to complain. Both Moose Lake and Banning are right off the 35, or at least a lot closer than the signs for William O'Brien and Wild River would have you believe. Banning is a massive state park that has its own little journey just to get to the appropriate area for the Hiking Club trail, and the snow drifts in the beginning weren't to last.
It's an odd route of intersecting trails, more than one of which I want to go back and do all on their own. Hiking Club appetizer sampler tray, you got me again. You know what you're doing. The loop itself looks like a flimsy axe in the middle of being bendy flung like a javelin. Does that make sense? Are you expecting it to this deep in the list? That's on you then.
The trail goes from a standard Hiking Club trail trope of a walk in the woods, but descends into a skinny out-and-back trip through an old quarry. They could've gotten rid of all this stuff. There are plenty of parks built on repurposed areas that don't have evidence or cool things left from what it used to be. Not the Banning State Park's Hiking Club trail! It goes right next to the cut-out rock faces. Then there are stacks of rocks the size of glacial erratics just hanging out on top of each other. There's old equipment around. There's a massive shell of an abandoned building. There's probably even more of which I would've taken a million pictures and sent them to someone specifically had I not been in a speedrun. It was date night after all.
This place has that undefinable quality of off-the-charts vibe, and yes I'm heavily biased because they're the vibes I specifically wanted that were enhanced by my subjective ranking system, but show me a travel writer who isn't more excited about the things they like. Throw in neurodivergent giddiness, and I am unapologetically geeking out over abandoned shit that also gives you a badass hike by the river. I make absolutely zero apologies to anyone who has a problem with unfiltered happiness. I call myself the damn Wanderloon, are you expecting a transcript of an informational brochure? I'll just be over here, skipping and posing like Toni Storm on the bridge. Watch for the SHOEEEEEEEE! I'm ready for my close-up, get the abandoned quarry as my backdrop. Dramatic pose, and.... Scene. (Yes, I absolutely did a Toni Storm dramatic pose on a bridge on this hike and there's nothing you can do about it. That's who I am as a person.)
Banning State Park is absolutely amazing.
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