Sometimes when I have a gig that’s a couple hours away, I will opt to stay at a hotel or an AirBnb rather than drive home late at night. (It’s true what they say about getting older and having trouble seeing in the dark.) On the way home from these I take the less obvious roads home. I like traveling the back roads wherever I go. You see so much more beauty, and that makes it worth the extra time. You’re just not going to see a family of sandhill cranes feeding in a field when you’re screaming down the Interstate. Now I plan these routes with cemetery crawls in mind. October 30, 2021 was one of those times. And so, in no particular order…
- Name: St. Marys Cemetery, Waverly, Minnesota
- Location: 45.06920, -93.98170
- Date Visited: October 30, 2021
St. Marys is a medium sized, with around 2,200+ graves the earliest of which dates from 1863. It’s fairly typical for the area, but it does have an interesting half-buried mausoleum.
- Name: Guardian Angels Cemetery, Chaska, Minnesota
- Location: 44.78750, -93.61190
- Date Visited: October 30, 2021
Guardian Angels is similar in size to the previous cemetery with 2,200+ graves (1864). It is on a hill, and features some very nice stones and monuments, as well as a grotto. On a sunny Saturday in October, it was quite beautiful.
- Spring Lake Cemetery, Prior Lake, Minnesota
- Location: 44.70504, -93.45783
- Date Visited: October 30, 2021
Spring Lake is small, with only 526 graves as of this posting, the oldest of which is from 1831. These photos show just how beautiful a place like this can be.
- Name: Credit River Catholic Cemetery, Prior Lake, Minnesota
- Location: 44.69155, -93.37929
- Date Visited: October 30, 2021
Another small cemetery with only 800+ graves dating to 1861. I took only one picture here. The carving on this very old stone is amazing. To think that that was all done by hand with a hammer and a chisel.
- Name: Old St. Thomas Cemetery, Corcoran, Minnesota
- Location: 45.12420, -93.58420
- Date Visited: October 29, 2021
Old St. Thomas is a very small, very rural cemetery surrounded by farm fields. It has only 290 graves as of this posting, the oldest of which is from 1860. I noticed that most of the people buried here were Irish.
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