I think back to last spring and all the hikes we attempted, but were foiled with flooded trails and rainy weather and I am grateful for better conditions. Especially, since our ‘leave the house’ activities are limited by the COVID-19 stay at home order. Hopefully, we can make hiking more of a weekly thing now that we don’t have a bunch of other obligations (some of which I miss, of course).

The week before this, my in-laws called my husband and mentioned this trail close to them. They talked it up quite a bit so my husband suggested we check this one out. We headed out early as we tend to do, but were a little apprehensive by a fairly full parking lot. These things bring extra concern when you are supposed to be social distancing, but we noticed that most of the vehicles had bike racks and that most people were mountain biking and not hiking. We saw a number of people on the hiking trail, but it was far from crowded.

Hike #: 28

Trail: Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve

Location: Savage, MN

Trail surface: dirt

Date: May 2nd, 2020

Jo: ★★★★

Jesse: ★★★

Riley: ★★★★

This trail is also used as a cross country trail in the winter and we took the route that is opposite of the winter route. There were plenty of fairly flat areas, but also a number of inclines (and far fewer declines) which meant my glutes got a nice workout. It was a wide trail (for those cross country folks), but still had a nice nature-y feel to it.

We had a little confusion over if we were going to follow the 4 mile or 2 mile trail and ended up putting in about 2.5 miles which was fine. I’d totally go back to this trail - expecially after all the trees have bloomed. It was a bug free trail this time of year so I wonder what it will be like farther into the season. Maybe we’ll meet the in-laws here this summer to find out.