Hike With Me - Beaver Island Trail

 

Beaver Island Trail

St. Cloud, Minnesota

Trail Hiked: 

Distance Hiked: 12.11 miles

Elevation Gain: 358 ft.

Duration: 3h 58m

Look, not every hike is necessarily about maximizing elevation gain or finding spectacular vistas at the perfect time of day. Sometimes, it’s just “I want to get good distance without nuch in the way of resistance to get the numbers up.” This was one of those times. 

But also, having an Adventure Lab to do along the way certainly helps in terms of motivation and focus.

St. Cloud probably doesn’t crack my top 100 in terms of places I’m excited to go in Minnesota. I always feel like it’s a junction point on my way to more interesting places, and that’s no disrespect to anyone who lives there… Well, maybe some. CityNerd referred to a certain mindset as “self-identified rurality,” and when a city has 70 thousand people, no amount of Truck With Attitude, I’m an Outlaw Despite Having the Exact Same One as the Next Four Behind Me makes it rural.

Beaver Island Trail is… perfectly adequate. It’s not completely bereft of interesting scenery, like perhaps the Dairyland Trail, but it’s not one I’d revisit to take it in again specifically. Going under the bridge, the path goes through a neighborhood before turning into the university, and meeting one of the many dams along the Mississippi River. From there, it’s a great path for tree canopies, local parks, and plenty of road noise nearby. I’m glad it exists, but being serviceable is not much motivation to travel 90 minutes without the lure of Adventure Lab finds and adding another Verified Complete trail to my list. I’d be much happier with something like this if I stepped out of my apartment and jumped right on it, but if I’m already traveling this far, urban trails that weave through neighborhood sidewalks aren’t what I’d seek.

Conveniently, the trail was suitable for the practice of further learning how to use my GoPro on the fly. Regardless of how much of a technical fuddyduddy as it likely makes me seem, figuring out the little tricks of using that thing is far more suited for flat and relatively banal mileage than the slopes of Mt. Si (spoiler alert). Mostly what I learned from my GoPro 5 is that the 12 I decided to buy when the replacement batteries for the 5 didn’t work was infinitely better, so it wasn’t entirely a waste. 

I have no intention of making St. Cloud seem like a featureless wasteland, despite my mostly playful ribbing earlier. Not to worry, no one in St. Cloud has ever said an unkind word about the Twin Cities or anyone who lives there, so I apologize for this uncharacteristic diversion of my usual completely objective travelogue. It’s not like I dared to be annoyed by horseshit on the Fort Ridgely Hiking Club trail during a Polar Vortex and the deepest pit of the Sickness or anything. That would just be silly.

I got 12 miles out of it. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday. I’m from Northeast Ohio, I would know.