Where Eryn and Dad Walk Completely Around a Lake

Eryn and I went to Thresher Fields Park today to look for one of the two Halloween caches left before we can find the mystery cache. We parked in the park and our GPS said .13 miles away, almost straight in front of the car. Like idiots, we scrambled down this muddy, concrete-ridden hill. Idiots, because a.) the cache was straight across the lake and we could have walked down the road a ways and cut in somewhere easier and b.) there was trail about 100' from the car that avoided the "danger, loose rocks" posted area.


We got to the bottom of the hill safely, however, and began our journey. The first part involved grabbing rocks and throwing them onto the ice to demonstrate why we weren't walking across the center of the lake. Here's Eryn with a few sounding stones.


Sure...it looks like the rocks are in no danger of falling in, but there were a few that stuck halfway through the ice, and another that went completely in. The first half of the lake looks like a rock garden thanks to us. In the spring, any number of fish are going to get beaned in the head after a sudden thaw.


This is where we originally thought the cache might be. Good think it wasn't. I'd have never gotten Eryn to look in the mouth of this culvert. What frightened me is that it appears to be an entrance to Marioland. One of those places where you squat down and disappear into an underground world of coins and mushrooms.


Eryn. Concrete surfing. It's all the rage in Eagan.


Just before we saw the dead deer. Half of a dead deer, really. Maybe a quarter. And nearby another 1/8th or so. It made the Halloween cache extra creepy. I took it as an opportunity to show Eryn how some bones attach to one another. Eryn was trying to be sad for this picture. Originally, she was trying to think about how much her ankles hurt, but that wasn't working. I have a more angst-ridden photo where she thought about our dead dog as part of her method acting.


The goal of the around the lake trip. Find the cache. Wear the mask.


Eryn refused to wear either scary mask, so we compromised and worked a bit with perspective.


Here's the lake we walked around. It goes quite a ways in either direction. I didn't think it was so bad, but then I wasn't wearing boots and snowpants like some people were.


Eryn, happy to be back to the starting point.