Day Trip Destinations

By Nell Musolf

Music Man Square is a popular location to visit in Mason City Iowa.

Photos courtesy Visit Mason City Iowa

Ahundred miles south of Mankato are two small cities nine miles apart that each offer a wide variety of activities for the day-trip traveler.

Mason City, the larger of the two towns, is in Cerro Gordo County and has a population of almost 27,000. Clear Lake, in the same county and nine miles due west of Mason City, tops out at 7,000 people.

Mason City is known for its large number of Prairie School style of architecture, made famous by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The style typically features geometric structures made of brick or stucco. In the city’s downtown, the Park Inn Hotel and City Bank buildings were designed by Wright. Both have been renovated and are open to the public. Scattered throughout the area are other examples of Prairie School architecture, many of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mason City is also home to a historic steam locomotive, the Cannonball 457, which is the last remaining Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway steam locomotive. Located in the picturesque Cannonball Gardens, train enthusiasts can visit the train for free.

Another interesting spot to visit is The Music Man Square, 308 South Pennsylvania Ave. The indoor square is based on “The Music Man,” a popular musical written by Mason City’s most famous son, Meredith Wilson. The Music Man Square was created using set designs from the 1962 movie and has an ice cream parlor, gift store and plenty of yesteryear charm.

For those who prefer being outdoors, Mason City’s downtown area is filled with shops, restaurants, bars and other retailers. For the art lovers, the Charles H. MacNider museum features fine original paintings,

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa is still visited by many fans. Wikipedia prints, photographs, sculpture and, thanks to another native son, puppeteer Bill Baird, a large puppet collection. The museum is at 303 S. Second St. SE and is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays. COVID restrictions are in place and masks are required.

Clear Lake is probably best known as the last place Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper — J.P. Richardson — performed before perishing in a plane crash minutes after take-off on Feb. 3, 1958. The Surf Ballroom, where the trio last played, is still open and was dedicated by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum as a historic rock and roll landmark. This summer, the Beach Boys will play the Surf Ballroom on Aug. 16.

Clear Lake’s historic downtown features quaint shops and eateries with an old-fashioned feel. In view from downtown is the lake that gave the town its name. Clear Lake stretches seven miles in length and half a mile wide. The Lady of the Lake, an authentic paddleboat built in 1960, is open for private parties or public cruises. There is also a state park on the lake for camping and other outdoor activities.

Both Mason City and Clear Lake have numerous restaurants The Mason City, Iowa aquatic park is a good way to cool off in the summer months.

and bars, ranging from lowcost family dining to higher-end meal experiences. Clear Lake’s Starboard Market, 310 Main Ave., is a local favorite. In Mason City, the 1910 Grille in the Park Inn Hotel, 7 West State St., offers fine dining in an atmosphere rich with history.

With more than 80 miles of hiking and biking trails, sports enthusiasts can keep busy all day long. The Aquatic Center, 843 Birch Drive, Mason City, has been closed due to the pandemic but is slated to reopen this summer and costs non-members $3 a day for admission.

Thrifters can look for treasures in both towns. Favorite thrifting spots include Village General Store, 830 Hwy 18 West, Clear Lake, and Affordables, 315 N. Delaware, Mason City. Gift stores and clothing stores are abundant in both communities.

Between the two miniature “twin cities,” a visit to Mason City and Clear Lake can fill an entire day with sightseeing, nature walks and eating before hitting Interstate 35 and heading back to Minnesota.

Weekend meteorologist Joshua Eckl began formally chasing tornadoes when he was attending University of North Dakota. Storm chasin’

By Diana Rojo-Garcia | Photos by Pat Christman

Joshua Eckl was 16 — a freshly licensed driver — when he was sent to get milk for his mom.

“I was actually chasing some thunderstorms in the local area,” said the South St. Paul native. His chase turned out to be a bit longer than a quick errand to the convenience store for some 2% — perhaps by a couple of hours.

Though Mom and Dad weren’t too happy about not receiving an update from the budding meteorologist, Eckl experienced his first close encounter with a storm.

“It was my first time chasing, and I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he said. “I was trying to observe the storm from a distance and what was happening, so there was a lot of curiosity and a little bit of a fear.”

Fear is something he knew a lot about. As a kid, Eckl was terrified of severe weather. It could be weather close to home or hundreds of miles away in a different part of the state that triggered his panic.

“I was terrified of thunderstorms, especially severe storms,” he said. “I didn’t understand distance when I saw a severe thunderstorm warning in our state, so I would start to freak out.”

Trying to alleviate their son’s anxiety, his parents sat Eckl down in front of the TV and showed him where his county was on the map.

“They told me to update them if the storm got closer. From there, as I grew older, my fear turned into curiosity.”

The curiosity grew, and Eckl headed to the University of North Dakota and studied atmospheric science. He graduated in 2018 and shortly after joined KEYC in Mankato as the weekend meteorologist.

“I always had this passion for being in meteorology in high school.”

He wanted to learn the ins and outs of forecasting. And though his first experience chasing happened as a

teen, he didn’t chase storms regularly. It wasn’t until his time at UND that Eckl began to pursue storms again, equipped with knowledge on how to remain safe on the chase and with a better understanding of what happens during a storm.

During his first storm on that initial errand run, Eckl observed the storm but felt completely out of his element.

“I didn’t know what I was looking at and didn’t understand what structures I looked at.”

After a year at UND, his first fullfledged storm chase took place in a three-credit storm chasing class that sent them to Texas. In two weeks, students had the opportunity to do more in-depth forecasting for severe weather and the opportunity for face-to-face experience with storms, like the one in Canadian, Texas. Witnessing the big tornado was surreal for Eckl.

“It was a day that we weren’t expecting much to happen but storms did fire off.”

The team was indecisive on whether or not to stay on location before heading to another to find storms, but they decided to move on. However, the students kept an eye on the first storm.

“One of our (teacher assistants) in the class said, ‘Keep looking backward.’” A row of trees blocked their view, but as soon as they came around, they spotted a funnel that developed into a tornado.

“There was a big stovepipe tornado and probably one of the best tornadoes,” he said. “It just sat there and spun in an open field. It was an unbelievable moment to see a very large tornado out in Texas with a bunch of nerds and storm chasers.”

Each year, Eckl heads out with a group of friends for a week — a “chase-cation” — to wherever the wind takes them.

Though some chasers carry weather instruments attached to their cars to measure wind speeds or dew points, Eckl doesn’t really carry those out onto a chase.

“I take a laptop and our laptop has all of our data and radar,” he said. It gives the team weather updates. They also take a GPS to track the roads.

“It can get pretty interesting on the road with the network in some areas. It’s crucial, too, to have cellular data.”

The farthest the group has gone to chase is near the Mexico-U.S. border in Texas. They can easily put 3,000 miles on a car during a trip.

There’s a risk in chasing, especially when the chaser doesn’t have adequate knowledge. Eckl ran into a couple who’d been watching the same storm as he was. He avoided going into the storm, as he realized it was going to produce significant-size hail, when the couple headed off into the storm.

“They had a good beating on their vehicle.”

Eckl suggests that anyone who wants to chase storms participate in a SkyWarn class with the National Weather Service.

“It’s a good introduction into spotting and what you’re looking at when looking at a storm so you’re not just going out chasing … It can be very dangerous.”

Encountering a storm is full of action, but there’s also a lot of waiting in between.

“We have down days where we will go and explore a new area we’ve never been to,” he said. Sometimes they head to a local baseball minor league game and also run into some interesting characters, such as Jack Seymour, a stranger who bought the group steak dinners.

But the action of storm chasing keeps Eckl coming back for more.

“There’s something, too, when you’re out in a storm and watching it from a safe distance … There’s this beauty that just captures me,” he said. “I’m captivated by how you can just watch this system that has so much energy, so much power being developed in front of you.”

Tornado chaser James Kor began chasing as a side-career in 2016.

Jamie Kor’s first tornado experience dates back to 1998 — the tornado that devastated St. Peter.

Kor was only 6 years old and remembers the funnel hitting the ground in his backyard in Nicollet — a full-blown tornado. At the time of landing, it was still a small tornado.

“But my dad followed it,” Kor said.

And even though he was 6, he recalls being amazed more than scared. Initially, of course, he felt some fear — being sent down to the basement with a powerful storm just around the corner.

In the basement, Kor, his dad and brother watched the tornado from a nearby window.

“We watched it come down from the sky, and then my dad was like ‘OK, I’m gonna follow it,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t want to stay here by myself!’” Kor said. “Mother Nature’s always amazed me.”

And since then, Kor’s hit the road chasing storms with his dad or by himself after he got his own car. What about chasing does he enjoy?

“Its unpredictability.”

Kor chases storms as a side career — full time he’s a laborer for the Laborers Union — and has been doing so since 2016 after he live-streamed a tornado. He had just gotten out of work near the power plant in Mankato and all he had was his phone. Kor put the

Captured by Joshua Eckl in Canadian, Texas, May 27, 2015.

A rainbow near a storm that Jamie Kor captured.

Storm system captured by Jamie Kor. Mammatus clouds captured by storm chaser Jamie Kor.

phone on his windshield mount and hit the live button on Facebook.

“Twenty minutes later, I’m driving down a dirt road and I’m realizing that the radar scan’s wrong and I look back at my phone again, and I look at my radar and I’m like, ‘This ain’t right,’” he said. Kor began to back up, knowing he was in a bad spot. “And as I did that, I said yep, this is a tornado overhead coming in right now and that’s when you see the cord flatten down and trees falling down.”

Kor ended up getting run over by a rain-wrapped tornado in his truck.

This footage is what got Kor chasing for brokers, such as SVL Media, after one of his friends saw the live video.

“My buddy had taken my live stream and sent it to one of their editors and the editors got a hold of me on Facebook messenger,” Kor said. “They emailed me all the contracts that night and signed me up.”

You’ve might have seen some of his footage on the Weather Channel or other national news networks. And not just tornadoes — Kor also chases snowstorms to shoot.

“I learned that people from Minnesota think snow is really boring while national news networks eat snow up like it’s candy.”

For the last five years, Kor has gone all across the tornado valley facing some intense storms, such as high precipitation cells — aka HP — which produce a lot of rain.

“It makes chasing a lot more difficult.”

A chaser can see on a radar where the rotation is but there are minutes of gap on that data. And if a chaser is too close, they can end up in the bear cage where the hook echo of a storm hooks up and starts looping in — that’s normally where a tornado is.

“It’s normally within a half a mile of a location, if not closer,” he said. “It all depends on the storm, but with those HP cells, you normally have to stay outside because, if you’re in that bear cage, you could get ran over by something destructive but not even notice it.”

Much like his experience in the Badlands. Famed storm chaser Reed Timmer was on this particular chase too (and one of the reasons Kor was more comfortable with the situation than he normally would have been) with forecast meteorologist Mark Scanlon. A friend of Kor’s also was along.

“You got these high rocks … with 100 miles an hour wind gust, (the rocks) will hit your car,” he said. “With SUVs, that’ll almost blow you over out of nowhere. So we ended up pulling off and that’s when we blew out our windshields with the hail while we watched this van continue into the worst part of the storm.”

Timmer kept going.

“But that’s why he gets the big bucks,” Kor laughed.

Kor hits the roads when tornado season begins — sometimes with

Gillette, Wyoming, June 2017, captured by Joshua Eckl

Lamar, Colorado, May 2018 captured by Joshua Eckl. Wright, Wyoming, on May 21, 2016. Pictured is Joshua Eckl.

his wife, friends or solo. And sometimes he and his 5-year-old son check out thunderstorms in the area. Not tornadoes — at least not yet.

Beyond chasing these majestic storms and capturing them on footage, Kor really got into storm chasing for the warnings. Chasers and spotters provide pertinent information to the National Weather Service.

Kor uses an app, RadarScope, which the NWS also uses. The app provides NWS with chasers’ information. NWS at times contacts chasers who are near a storm.

“They have an index on storm reports and can see who has given them — some people give false storm reports or bad storm reports and they’ll call you,” Kor said. “If they call you, it’s normally a good thing.”

Kor does work with local NWS to provide accurate reports — damage, wind speeds, hail size, etc. The radar information can only go so far, Kor said. Parts of Minnesota can get iffy on the radar because it can only reach out so far.

“They really rely on the ground information,” Kor said. A spotter or chaser can verify the radar by confirming, for example, a rotating wall cloud. Chasers also check in on damaged homes to make sure anyone inside is OK.

“If there’s severe damage, you got a first-aid kit — so if someone needs a tourniquet or for some reason, they’re bleeding, you bandage them up, clean them up and stay with them if they’re severely traumatized until paramedics can get there.”

Though Kor has spent much of his life chasing storms, he warns it is dangerous.

“It’s not something everyone should do.”

For some, storm chasing is a form of getting money and money drives people. “You’ll get chasers out there doing stupid things, driving down roads that you can’t see going 100 mph, passing on double yellow lines all to get that shot.”

Training is key, Kor said, such as NWS Skywarn training.

For Kor, storm chasing is all about the unpredictability even when he’s not actively chasing, like in 2019 when he was driving toward Fargo to work.

“My severe weather alert went off on my phone and said I was in a tornado warning,” he said. “I wasn’t fully awake and it’s far too early to go to work at 2 a.m.”

He looked at his radar and something didn’t look right. There was a couplet crossing over I-94, precisely at Kor’s location. He watched three trees fall over onto the highway. Kor called his wife to let her know what was going on.

“I said, ‘If I end up in the hospital, this is the town I’m in if I don’t make it work,’” Kor said.

He was stuck and still groggy — he just kept driving.

“I got to work, though, and I had a story to tell.” MM

By Pat Christman, special to The Free Press

summer and fall full of renewed life. MM

Alex and Sarah Cornish stand on a sidewalk outside the Blue Earth County Justice Center while Judge Gregory Anderson presides over the brief wedding ceremony. Love &Marriage

By Robb Murray

But for Sarah and Alex Cornish, like many couples who’d planned a 2020 wedding, normal wasn’t going to be part of the equation.

They’d set dates, then canceled them. They’d gotten their hopes up when it looked like case infection rates were dropping, then scrapped plans when shutdowns were the norm and gatherings were outlawed.

Then they got an idea. They were obviously in love and had been planning a wedding for two reasons: to officially tie the knot and to throw a party to celebrate their union.

But there are no rules that say both of those things have to happen on the same day.

So on a sunny day last June, Sarah and Alex got dressed up and met a robed judge on a sidewalk outside the Blue Earth County Justice Center. It took four minutes.

Do you take Sarah?

Yes.

Do you take Alex?

Yes.

Just like that, with a statemandated minimal crowd on hand — six people, including the bride and groom — Sarah and Alex became husband and wife.

“We’ve been together for nine years. And we’re like, ‘You know, let’s just get married,’” she says. “We’re still gonna go through with everything we’ve planned. We just really wanted to be married to each other, I guess. I don’t know. It’s kind of silly.”

The Cornishes are an example of the havoc wreaked upon the weddings of the world. Graduations, concerts, sporting events and everything else got put on hold while many people did their part to put the pandemic behind us. Weddings, however, fall in a category all their own. They aren’t a rite of passage linked to age, such as graduations. They’re not something that can be easily rescheduled, like a concert or a ball game. They’re packed with emotion and stress and tangled up with traditions and customs that are sometimes planted in people’s minds at a young age.

So when you mess with a wedding, you mess with people’s dreams.

But we’re not here to blame anyone. Because, while it’s true many weddings got postponed (or perhaps canceled, who knows?), a fair number of people took their COVID-tinted lemons and made a pretty fair batch of lemonade.

But here’s the good news: With COVID numbers dropping, wedding planning is picking up. Organizers at the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center say bookings are on the rise.

After dating for many years, Sarah Cornish says she and Alex are happy they finally got married, even if the wedding didn’t go off as they’d planned.

Ever since restrictions became the norm, the state has treated weddings as a special category.

“The state in the past has seen wedding receptions as different than other types of events,” says Claudia Hicks, hospitality manager at Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center. “There’s a relaxed quality to weddings that other events might not have — like business events — that I think has been associated with a concern for the spread of COVID.”

Bookings are picking up. Hicks says organized brides were

The Cornishes plan a full-blown wedding reception this month to celebrate their union.

predicting in March that wedding season was about to break free of lockdown. That’s when the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center hosted its annual Bridal Show.

“We saw a big resurgence of interest,” Hicks says. “It was a good temperature check to see where people are at with planning weddings, and it was incredibly well attended.”

With a few exceptions, venues lost an entire year of weddings. They’re counting on the back end of 2021 and 2022 to recoup some of that lost revenue. But they don’t expect it to double.

Hicks says the pandemic, in addition to changing a lot of plans, changed a lot of minds as well. More couples opted for backyards and immediate family instead of ballrooms and big crowds. So while they do expect a busy wedding year, some of the revenue they’d typically predict is simply gone.

“I personally know a lot of people who just decided a big wedding wasn’t what they were gonna do,” she says.

For the immediate future, weddings still may carry the trappings of COVID reality, such as smaller sizes and maybe hand sanitizers as part of table centerpieces. But that’s better than the alternative: no weddings, a concept Mikala Ness knows all about.

Ness, who was born and raised in Mankato but now works at a hotel in Oakdale, had the unenviable job of calling brides to tell them their wedding wasn’t going to happen.

“We only had one or two scheduled at the time. One of them understood, and she actually rebooked. So it was fine,” Ness says. “The other one was a little bit upset, because, you know, she’s a bride, she’s looking forward to her wedding. And to find out you can’t have it … It was really hard for us to get that across to her and help her understand that it’s not our rules. We were just doing what we’re told. She did not end up rebooking with us.”

Anne and Dan Nichols, like the Cornishes, had planned a large January 2021 wedding with 250 guests. During the summer prior, they surveyed COVID infection rates and figured the pandemic would subside in time for their winter wedding.

But instead of continuing a downward trend, infection rates skyrocketed and everything shut down.

Anne and Dan were determined.

“We decided to get married anyway,” Nichols recalls, “because that was important to us.”

She says she felt sad at first, thinking of the large wedding she’d always dreamed of. But as the event played out — a small gathering of the couple’s closest friends and family — something wonderful happened.

“After it was all said and done, I was so happy that we had such an intimate wedding,” Nichols says. “We really got to hang out with family and friends and talk with them. Everyone was involved in every aspect of the wedding. It was really fun and something a little bit different. A story to tell our kids, for sure.”

And just because they said their vows doesn’t mean they’re not going ahead with the dream wedding reception.

“It’s going to be pretty much the same as the wedding reception we had planned,” Nichols says. “It’ll be much more

Top: The church was nearly empty when Anne and Dan Nichols got married. But they didn’t mind; the intimacy that came with a smaller wedding made up for the lack of spectators. Bottom: Anne Nichols says she’s excited to finally be able to have the big wedding reception she’d always dreamed of, and she hopes it can be a celebratory moment not just for their union, but also for the waning of the pandemic.

laid back. I think at the core of it, it’s just a party. I’ll wear my dress, he’ll wear his tux, we’ll walk in together. But other than that, I just want everyone to be able to get together at the end of the pandemic.”

The Cornishes have the same vibe. And this month they’ll be holding the wedding event Sarah had always imagined. And she’ll finally get to wear her wedding dress; it’s been parked at Valerie’s Bridal for two years.

“I’m glad we did our little courthouse ceremony. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to explain,” she says. “And knowing that I get to experience that again, but in a different way is … amazing.” MM

Seven-year-old Warren Weyland of Mankato (white shirt), tossing a disc at the basket hole, was the youngest of 96 participants in the May 1 Lando Open disc golf tournament. Photo by Dana Melius

By Dana Melius

Nolan Crockford looked for a way to stay active in competitive sports after high school and settled in nicely to the up-and-coming world of disc golf.

And while many new to the game take it on as a recreational outdoor activity, fueling the growth in disc golf courses throughout Minnesota, the 27-yearold Janesville resident has taken to the sport in a more serious way. Through May 2, Crockford had already participated in nine competitive tournaments, winning his division twice.

Crockford said he got hooked on disc golf participating in a couple of benefit events in Pierre, South Dakota, a few years back.

“From there, I found a local league and it just blossomed from there,” he said. “Last year, due to COVID, it was about the only thing you could do.”

On May 1, Crockford finished fourth in the Lando

Open at the Land O’ Memories disc golf course in Mankato, shooting a 16-under par 120 in the Advanced division on the 18-hole layout. He followed that up the next day winning the Forest City, Iowa, Frenzy tournament with an 8-under par, two-stroke victory.

Ninety-six disc golfers participated in the Lando Open, with tournament directors William Hansen Begg, of Mankato, and Crockford each scoring aces (holes-in-one). Seven-year-old Warren Weyland, of Mankato, was the youngest participant, tossing his discs in the Junior division.

Crockford’s climb in the disc golf world means his individual rating has improved to 924 (on a scale of 1,000) since the start of the 2021 season. The Professional Disc Golf Association website keeps up-to-date player ratings and tournament results. Crockford has only been a member since 2020.

While Crockford remains an amateur right now, that might be changing next season.

“Next year I will be switching to playing open (professional),” Crockford said, who loves “the competitive aspect of it.”

It’s not likely Crockford will get rich quick as a professional disc golfer. There was no prize money in the Open division at the Lando Open. But at Adrian, where Crockford won his Amateur division, there was a purse of $1,990. Pro Jimmy Seechan, of Rochester, won a first-place prize of $500.

But top pros, on the other hand, are doing pretty well. Paul McBeth of Huntington Beach, California, has earned almost $530,000 in his career, including $6,000 in this spring’s Dynamic Discs Open in Emporia, Kansas. In 2019, a record $5.6 million was earned during PDGA events.

The PDGA dates back to the 1970s, after “Steady” Ed Headrick first invented the Frisbee (in 1966) as an employee of the Wham-O company, leaving there and eventually inventing the Disc Golf Pole Hole in 1975.

But the growth in disc golf has really accelerated from 2014 to 2020, according to PDGA figures, with a near doubling of course numbers from 4,723 to 9,392 throughout the United States.

A definite need for improvement — attracting more female disc golfers — has been a difficult goal, according to regional disc golfers. Within the PDGA, 93% of registrants are male. At the May 1 Lando Open in Mankato, of the 96 disc golfers, only seven were women.

Chad Hillesheim, of St. Peter, believes, like in regular golf, having women’s tee boxes to shorten holes would attract more female disc golfers. He’s planning such design concepts for St. Peter’s Riverside Park disc golf course, shortening up some of the holes for junior, senior and women golfers. Hillesheim is also hoping to help spearhead future redesign efforts at Land O’ Memories.

More and readily accessible restrooms on courses would also likely help, disc golfers say.

Chad Hillesheim sits near the first tee of the Riverside Park disc golf course in St. Peter. Photo by Dana Melius

“Riverside Park is nestled on the banks of the Minnesota River. This 18-hole park is primarily made up of a combination of large mature trees and small immature trees and thicket.” — Udisc website.

Most regional disc golfers love the recreational aspect of the game. It’s outside, a big plus since the pandemic hit. And most players can relate to their days

Lando Open: Four disc golfers head into the woods toward a hole at the Land O’ Memories disc golf course. Photo by Dana Melius

tossing a Frisbee.

Crockford is one of several regional disc golf enthusiasts who have spearheaded efforts to heighten awareness for this growing sport. He and Hillesheim are among disc golfers who participate regularly in the Mankato leagues at Land O’ Memories.

Hillesheim spends most of his time at the Riverside Park disc golf course just off Highway 22 on the southeast edge of St. Peter. Nearly every day, including winter, he enjoys the 18-hole layout through the woods.

“I put a lot of time on the course,” says the 38-year-old Hillesheim, who works in Chanhassen but gets back to St. Peter by 2 p.m. and typically enjoys a round of disc golf. “But this course is not very friendly for beginners.”

Ed Lee, executive director of the St. Peter Chamber of Commerce, credits Hillesheim’s presence and work on the Riverside Park course for its growing local popularity.

“He has done so much for that course,” Lee said.

Lee, like Hillesheim, plays every day. He started playing recreationally in 1983 at Lone Lake Park in Minnetonka.

“I’ve been fanatical about disc golf this year as I have played every day,” Lee admits, including winter rounds. But he enjoys the Riverside Park course best in the early spring, before the growth of trees and brush.

“It’s as much about walking in nature’s fresh air with friends as it is about throwing plastic saucers,” Lee said. “I’ve played with only fellow fanatics; it’s that addictive. Everyone I’ve seen gets hooked and just loves it.”

Lee’s among those who’ll take a weed-whipper to clear out some of the growth around the course. While St. Peter city workers do mow the fairways from time to time, Lee and Hillesheim note it’s primarily a volunteer crew that keeps the course up.

Hillesheim received a donation from the Mankato Jaycees, in conjunction with the Mankato Area Disc Golf United organization, to improve the tee platforms at the Riverside Park course, doing much of the construction himself.

“Three years ago you could come out here and be the only one out here,” Hillesheim said. “Within the last few years, it’s really blown up.”

Lee agrees.

“It’s easy to see why disc golf’s popularity is rising with all ages,” he said. “Disc golf is low cost, challenging, social and active.”

Riverside Park’s disc golf course, established in 2004, has at times been under water due to flooding of the Minnesota River. But the recent Highway 22 reconstruction and secondary bridge have eased that problem, Hillesheim said.

He, like many serious disc golfers, carries a bag full of discs. Some are designed to fly a long distance on the golfer’s opening shot toward a basket some 300 to 400 feet away from the tee platform. Others — the “putters”

Ed Lee, dedicated disc golfer, throws a disk at the St. Peter Disc Golf Course. Photo by Pat Christman

— are smaller, made easier to land in baskets (the holes). Lee owns 30 discs but typically only uses five on a course. It’s similar for Hillesheim.

“I started disc golfing in 2008 just because it was cheap entertainment and I had a couple of friends that were starting the sport,” said Hillesheim, a New Ulm native. “The first course that I ever played was Nehl’s Park in New Ulm.”

But he also loves seeing others enjoy the Riverside Park course.

“When I moved to St. Peter in 2016, I had a main goal of improving the local course,” Hillesheim said. “It became so overgrown that it was almost impossible to play without losing discs.”

Lee considers Riverside Park a top-five state disc golf course. But he acknowledges it takes a step or two back when the summer growth takes over.

The three regional disc golf enthusiasts all list the same three courses as tops on their lists, with Blue Ribbon Pines in East Bethel as No. 1. The others include Kaposia Park in South St. Paul and the three-course disc golf complex in Fairmont at Cedar Creek Park. MM