Rundle (3) Baylor Regional Park. A Cross Country Rundle

Who like me, detested cross country at school? It was the winter athletic sport/method of torture, of choice when I was being educated. Running across fields, up and down hills, through farmyards, slipping and sliding in the mud. 

Ugh. Then why do I find myself looking forward to this run at Baylor Regional Park forty years later?

Mainly because it’s not cold wet and muddy. I have run my fair share of marathons on trails. Approximately 24 of the 26.2 miles of The Whistlestop marathon in Ashland, WI are on old railroad track bed, not unlike the surface at the park. I’ve run that event in the snow. I have cold weather running gear, when needed. Cross Country holds no fears for me now.

Since I learned to cross country ski earlier this year, I have spent quite a bit of time on the trails in the park getting the hang of the sport, and I love it. There’s five miles of trail here, and as that was what my training plan called for. That was what I decided to do. Run the trails that I have ski’d and snowshoe’d.

It didn’t look like this the last time I was here

Of course, everything looks totally different at the end of spring compared to the bleak midwinter when I was here skiing last. Where I felt I should run turned out to be an RV pitch, and a fire pit had appeared from nowhere. But once I got out of the camp site it was plain sailing.

The scenery was a beautiful as it was in the winter.

Nicely compacted limestone trail, comfy on the legs.

The trail heads off into the distance

I easily found the section of the trail where I had embarrassingly fallen going uphill, because my skiing skills were no match for the gradient. Another spot I recalled because it was where I fell and lost track of one of my ski’s as it sped off into the undergrowth.

The oddest thing I saw on the trail were the brushwood teepee’s in a couple of clearings in the woods. Why they were there is a mystery. It was an interesting sight to cogitate on as I jogged around the trail.

Teepee 1.

Teepee 2.

I left the woods behind and skirted Eagle Lake, the swimming beach was deserted. A few swans in the distance were pretty much the sum total of the wildlife I saw on the run. 

No swimmers today

The Observatory

One thing worth recording on the run is the Minnesota Astronomical Society’s Onan (Eagle Lake) Observatory. The M.A.S. is one of the largest astronomy societies in the USA. The observatory is sometimes open at night for star parties when you can use their telescopes to view the cosmos.

With that I headed back to the car. My Garmin came up slightly short on the distance, so I did a lap of the parking lot to bring up five miles. A relaxing run in lovely scenery. Nothing could be finer. What’s next?