Let St. Cloud Find You

We know St. Cloud. We eat here, ride here, run our errands here. In short, we are familiar with it. But familiar isn’t the same as known, and we had never set out to explore our own corner of central Minnesota the way we’d explore somewhere new. So one weekend, my wife, Jen, and I did just that. We pretended we had never been, and let the city introduce itself all over again. As it turned out, we had missed a few things along the way.

We rolled into town hungry, and our first stop was Boil Seafood Restaurant, where we grabbed a table by the window. The combo platter for two looked good: crab legs and shrimp, with hush puppies on the side.

We tied plastic bibs around our necks, each one printed with a cartoon lobster, but skipped the gloves. There’s a point in a meal like this where dignity goes out the window and you just get down and dirty, crackin’ legs with your bare hands, and we reached it about ninety seconds in. When we had worked through the pile of shells in front of us, it was time to see the show we had been looking forward to in a while. Perfect timing.

From there it was just a short walk to the Paramount Theater, where we had tickets to see Paula Poundstone do her stand-up act. After a quick round through the attached art gallery and gift shop, we filtered into the historic theater which was filled to near capacity by the time we found our seats.

Poundstone came out wearing a black and green striped zoot suit with an equally oversized, wildly colorful tie, and she got to work almost immediately.
She’s a self-confessed talker, and she leaned into it hard. Rather than barrel through a set, she riffed on the audience, picking out people in the crowd and asking what they did for a living, then chasing the answers wherever they led. The audience talked right back, and the whole thing became a kind of two-way conversation. Fleet Farm came up, the regional farm-supply chain that anyone from these parts knows by heart. So did Minnesota town names like Staples and Long Prairie, which got their own laughs simply for existing. In between the crowd work, she talked about her cat Larry, her kids, and life on the road. Two and a half hours later, we walked back out into the night, still chuckling.

We started Saturday at Jules’ Bistro, a downtown spot with the feel of a European coffee shop. From our table near the window, we watched everyday life roll by outside: people walking to wherever they were headed, a fire truck rumbling past, a man with headphones bopping along to a song only he could hear. It was early and town was just waking up. Inside, the kitchen at Jules’ makes everything from scratch or sources it locally, right down to the syrups and the sauces, and the array of cakes in the case made a strong case for skipping breakfast entirely and going straight to dessert. We resisted. Jen ordered the Jules’ Special, toast and eggs, the sourdough coming from Backwards Bread Co., while I went with oatmeal topped with almonds, raisins, coconut, and maple syrup, a rare healthy move for me.

After breakfast we wandered downtown to let the morning settle. Jen browsed Rush Boutique, and then we stumbled onto a place that stopped us in our tracks: the B-Side Indie Music Cafe. Eclectic, vintage, cozy, edgy. Every word we reached for fell short. The place was furnished in funky pieces spanning the 1950s through the ’70s, striking furniture assembled by someone with very specific and very good taste. It turned out to be a nonprofit coffee shop and community hub.

We got to chatting with the barista, who told us about open mic nights, live bands, and art classes. We took our coffee up onto the little stage and sat there to drink it, which felt like exactly the right thing to do. Before we left, we struck up a conversation with a local who gave us a tip: keep an eye out for something unusual along the trail, near an industrial area. We filed it away and made a mental note.

The trail he was talking about was the Beaver Island Trail, and it was waiting for us next. It was a partly sunny day, with enough clouds drifting through to warrant a light jacket, which is just about ideal weather for a ride along a river. The trail takes its name from a cluster of about 20 islands in the Mississippi, and we started at its northern end on 5th Avenue North, near the River’s Edge Convention Center.

We had ridden all of thirty seconds before we encountered our first interpretive panel. Always read the plaque. That’s our motto, so we stopped. The panel turned out to be the first in a series chronicling the history of the Granite City, and we worked our way through them as we went. 

We learned that the city grew together out of three separate settlements, originally named Upper Town, Lower Town, and Middle Town. Another panel told us that back in the early days, residents used to complain about the squealing wheels of the oxcarts hauling along the river. We also stopped to take a picture through a metal photo frame near the Convention Center, framing ourselves against the water.

The trail kept following the river. After ducking under Highway 23, we had to detour onto streets through the South Side neighborhood around St. Cloud State University for a couple of blocks. It was no hardship at all, as it turned out, since the route took us past fancy homes and stately mansions built back in the 1900s. We picked the trail up again near Husky Stadium on the campus, and not long after, we stopped to watch people fishing near the hydroelectric dam.

Then came the actual trailhead at Beaver Island Park, complete with parking and restrooms. From this point on, the trail shed the city and turned natural, flanked by trees and meadows with the river running alongside us the whole way like a companion who didn’t need to talk. At one point we reached an overlook and stopped to take in the Beaver Islands themselves, scattered out across the water. It was a good day for a ride.

The neighborhoods eventually gave way to an industrial stretch, and that’s when we suddenly remembered the hot tip from the B-Side. We started scanning, and sure enough, we spotted our prize in the gated yard of a construction company: a full-size replica of the Space Shuttle Inspiration, its nose peeking out from behind a cluster of storage buildings. A bit of quick trailside research filled in the rest of the story. It had been brought to town by a private investor who wanted to turn it into an attraction, a plan that, like a lot of grand plans, never quite got off the ground. There it sat anyway, a piece of would-be space history hiding behind shipping containers in central Minnesota. We couldn’t have been happier we actually found it.

We pressed on to the trailhead at River Bluffs Regional Park, where we noticed the public restrooms were built into the local fire station, which struck us as an efficient bit of small-town design. The scenery shifted again, this time from neighborhoods to hotels, and before long we reached the end of the trail in Saint Cloud. Technically it continues to Riverside Park near Clear Water, but there’s a gap of about two miles in between, and bridging it would have meant riding the roads. We decided we had earned some lunch instead, turned around, and headed back toward town.

Lunch was at Tres Pozoles, a Mexican restaurant that had been open about a year and a half. We had barely settled in before the owner, Francisco, came to our table to thank us for visiting. The place specializes in pozole, the traditional Mexican stew, and Francisco’s son Emiliano brought us samples along with a friendly little primer on the dish, assuring us the recipes were “just like in Mexico.” We took him at his word, and the food backed it up. I ordered the Pozole Rojo and a glass of jamaica, the hibiscus-flower drink, while Jen went with the birria tacos. It was a delicious meal, and one that could not possibly have been served with more pride.

We weren’t done. Just a few doors down at Michoacana Treats, the vibrant colors were only the beginning. For the uninitiated, the place offers a bewildering array of traditional, handmade Mexican treats both sweet and savory. Traditional Michoacán ice cream by the scoop, frozen popsicles, agua fresca fruit juice drinks, spicy mangonada shakes, shaved ice, walking tacos, bubble waffles, and more delicacies than I can remember. Jen got a Nutella and strawberry popsicle. I went with a vanilla milk ice cream popsicle studded with pieces of Gansito, a Mexican chocolate snack cake. One taste, and I felt like I’d made an excellent life choice.

Next on our list was Quarry Park in Waite Park, the area’s most popular park and, fittingly, Waite Park’s green lung. It opened in 1998, though the quarry operations that gave it its character ended back in the 1950s. Granite pulled from this ground was once shipped out and used in construction all over the world. The park and its adjacent Scientific and Natural Area cover 750 acres, with about five miles of trails running through it.

What must have looked like a lunar landscape in the quarrying days is now slowly being reclaimed by nature, but the rock piles and old quarries are still clearly visible, and they make for a genuinely unique recreation experience.
There’s hiking, skiing, mountain biking, and rock climbing here, all set against a landscape of mixed woods and prairie. The old quarries have filled with water and now serve as spots for fishing, swimming, and even scuba diving.

One quarry still holds a working derrick from the early 1900s, standing seventy-five feet tall, and the park occasionally hosts demonstrations of it in action. We walked the hiking trails and were surprised to find very few people out, despite a parking lot that was nearly full. We had whole stretches of that strange, beautiful landscape to ourselves.

After all that work, we decided we had earned a pint at Beaver Island Brewing Company back in downtown St. Cloud. The taproom is small but cozy, built into a former car repair shop, and the brewery has fully embraced the building’s past. They even repurposed the old lubrication station and turned it into a beer dispenser. Where 5W30 oil once flowed, an array of ales now pours instead, everything from classic lagers to smoky porters to more unusual offerings like a coffee cream ale. We grabbed a seat on the patio and raised our glasses to a job well done, ours and theirs.

Just a few blocks away, the dinner crowd was already gathering at the Pickled Loon. The atmosphere was laid-back, set inside an old brick building that ran long and skinny, and the bones of its former life were still very much on display: a tin ceiling overhead, wood floors underfoot, and an old-timey bar anchoring the room. Classic rock played in the background. The menu had a little bit of everything, and there was clearly no problem with meatloaf and salmon living side by side on the same page. Jen ordered the fish and chips, and out came a gigantic bowl of it, even more impressive once we caught a glimpse of the tiny, tiny kitchen it came from. I went with the Italian Chopped Sandwich, nice and meaty, with a bit of vinegar tang from the chopped vegetables. We ate well, again, and rolled back to call it a night.

Sunday morning took us to Brigitte’s Cafe, a St. Cloud institution with a history going all the way back to 1970, when German immigrant Brigitte Schneider opened a small diner on Highway 10. The place caught on, moved a couple of times over the years, and passed from Brigitte to her children and now to her grandchildren. The menu these days is American fare through and through. A picture of Brigitte herself hangs on the wall behind the cash register. She sported a serious beehive hairdo, and she lives on in a cartoon version of herself that’s become the restaurant’s logo.
While we waited, we watched a little boy work the crane machine in the lobby. Against all odds, he pulled out a prize, and the people standing in line behind us broke into a chorus of oohs and aahs. Our food, meanwhile, came out at lightning speed. We hadn’t even taken a sip of coffee before the plates landed. Jen had the standard American breakfast, and I had a breakfast sandwich, and both of us marveled at how quickly a kitchen can move when it’s been doing this for fifty-plus years.

After breakfast, we wandered over to Lake George, just south of downtown. The little lake has been part of the fabric of Saint Cloud since the very beginning of the city’s history. Over the years it’s been maintained and dredged, and generations of St. Cloud residents have learned to swim in it. Together with Eastman Park, which wraps around the eight-acre body of water, it’s become a genuine neighborhood hangout, with outdoor seating, recreational rentals, and a regular Summertime by George concert series that draws big weeknight crowds in the warmer months.
We walked a loop around the lake to let breakfast settle, in no great hurry.

From there we made our way to Munsinger Gardens, and we were glad we did. The gardens trace back to Joseph Munsinger, St. Cloud’s parks superintendent in the 1930s, who used Works Progress Administration labor to create a one-of-a-kind show garden on the site of a former sawmill along the Mississippi.

It’s grown a great deal since then to include a greenhouse, concessions, a fountain, a small river, and a cabin. The Munsinger Clemens Botanical Society now tends the grounds and grows all the plants, shrubs, and trees themselves. The result has become one of the jewels of St. Cloud. We very much enjoyed our stroll through the grounds, as did the other people who had come to take photos, and we made a sincere if not entirely successful attempt to identify every species we passed. The whole place had a deeply relaxing vibe that slowed our pulses.

By the time we had circled the gardens, our breakfast had finally settled enough for one last ride, and we were ready for a spin on the mountain bike trails at the southern end of town. The system is named the Jail Trail, and the name is no accident, because it borders the grounds of the Saint Cloud Correctional Facility.

There are about six miles of trail here, easy riding that winds through woods and a few open areas, and we were genuinely surprised by some of the huge pines tucked in among them. It’s a fun, old-school mountain bike system, the kind that makes you grin while you ride it, and it’s lovingly maintained by the Mid-Minnesota Cycling Club. It was the perfect last act for the weekend.

By the time we loaded up the bikes for the drive home, St. Cloud had handed us a little bit of everything: a riverside trail with a hidden space shuttle, a quarry turned playground, pozole made just like in Mexico, beer poured from an old lube station, and a beehive-haired German immigrant whose diner still feeds the town three generations on.

We came for a weekend of outdoor exploring, and we found it. But somewhere between the interpretive panels and the patio pints and the conversation with a stranger who pointed us toward a hidden treasure, it became clear we had missed some things on previous visits. It turns out you just have to get on a bike or lace up your shoes, and let a place find you.