River Trails – Neaton Adventures

Today’s hiking adventure began at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the Long Meadow Lake Unit.

We hiked the Long Meadow Lake Trail.

The wildlife refuge is surrounded by office buildings, the airport, Mall of America, hotels, and apartments however, all those buildings seem to fade away the further along the trail one goes.

The trail followed alongside the Minnesota River. Eagles perched high in the trees above us. We saw several of their giant nests too.

We continued along the trail towards Highway 77.

Once on the other side of the Highway 77 bridge, the trail became much narrower.

Beavers definitely made their mark on some of the trees. We even spotted several hornet nests.

Some of the trees had a vibrant green moss growing on them.

River trails are some of our favorite trails. The bikers with the fat tire bikes seem to enjoy them too.

We crossed over a few small creeks.

We reached another highway and stopped to look at the map. At this point we could turn around and head back to our starting point or we could continue along the river trail. Well, the river trail won 2-0.

We crossed under Highway 35W.

Several different trails caught our attention, but we decided to return and hike those in the near future.

With all the open fields, we were surprised we didn’t see any deer.

Now birds, we saw so many different types of birds throughout our hike… Eagles, Cardinals, Geese, Ducks, small blue birds, and so many more! Someday I will learn the names of those birds too. Unfortunately, they fly so darn fast I couldn’t get a good photo of them.

We did find some mushrooms though.

The trail led us towards a creek.

In order to stay on the trail, we needed to cross over the creek. Thankfully, we found a way. Not sure if it was a beaver dam, but it worked. We carefully made our way across the creek. The small hill on the other side doesn’t look so big however, it was super muddy and with each step up, we would slide down.