Hearts in Hawai'i
State Parks #21 & #22--Father Hennepin State Park & Mille Lacs Kathio State Park
7/14/2024
If you are doing a tour of Minnesota State Parks and find yourself on the south shore of Mille Lacs Lake in central Minnesota, there are two State Parks which can easily be knocked off in a day, being spaced less than 15 miles apart. These are Father Hennepin State Park and Mille Lacs Kathio State Park. The bonus is that they are a short hour and a half drive southwest of Proctor.
Our initial plan was to capture whatever magic we could find in these two parks yesterday but the threat of severe weather, especially in the morning, made us bump back this visit to Sunday. And the weather turned out to be nearly ideal in both parks, albeit somewhat muggy. What was not ideal were the number of flying critters we found, especially at Mille Lacs Kathio. All the Repel bug spray didn't alleviate our being swarmed by legions of these things. They're not dangerous, of course, just a major nuisance. We had to cut our visit to Mille Lacs Kathio a bit short due to this.
Father Hennepin State Park is a small one at only 320 acres and, because of this, is somewhat limited as to hiking choices. We chose an abbreviated version of the Hiking Club Trail which started along the Mille Lacs Lake shoreline. The trails here are easy, mostly paved and somewhat wide and with no real hills to deal with. If you're looking for a hiking challenge, you won't find it here. What you will find is quite nice scenery.
If you choose the Hiking Club Trail as we did, it's a bit of a drive through the park to get to the parking area but considering the size of this park, it really didn't take us long to get from the southern entrance to the northern parking lot. The trail is only a 2-mile loop and we both thoroughly enjoyed our hike.
Leaving Father Hennepin State Park, it was a quick drive to the much larger Mille Lacs Kathio State Park. Again, we had to drive from the park entrance on the eastern end of the park to the parking lot adjacent to the Landmark Trail which is at Ogechie Lake. This time it was a more substantial drive and took us probably ten minutes to get from one side of the park to the other.
The trail starts right there and is impossible to miss. A lady parked next to us rolled down her window and told us of the bug situation. I said "Yeah, we were just at Father Hennepin park so we know about the bugs" "Not these bugs, they're much worse" she replied and having been at Father Hennepin on Saturday, she knew of what she spoke
She wasn't kidding! What was supposed to be a 1.7 mile hike turned into less than a mile as we limited ourselves to the Landmark Trail Loop. It was enjoyable even while we were swatting away the numerous bugs trying to set up shop in what is left of my hair! 
Parking lot at Father Hennepin
Trail winds its way through a picnic area
First good look at Mille Lacs Lake
Patty smiling on the trail!
Another trail view
Sandy shore at Mille Lacs Lake
Me at Mille Lacs Lake
Nearing the end of our Father Hennepin State Park hike
On the Hiking Club Trail at Mille Lacs Kathio State Park
Patty doing battle with another swarm of bugs!
Previous: 7/4/2024--State Park #20--Bear Head Lake State Park
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last updated july 14, 2024
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