It wasn’t Arkansas . . . Our Adventure to Turkey Run State Park

Katie and I had been planning all summer a summer’s end hiking trip to Arkansas – her pick. She wanted to road trip to the Buffalo River and hike Hawksbill Crag. It wasn’t going to be a strenuous hike but just a couple miles. It was going to provide magnificent views. We were going to attach a few other trails and camp overnight.

I’m a planner so I had been researching and that means keeping up with the weather. About a week before we were to leave, the weather showed 80% chance of rain. We had been willing to suffer the 90+ degrees, but storms weren’t going to work for us, so that meant a back up plan.

I began researching hiking destinations within about five hours and I wanted to head towards cooler weather. Illinois and Indiana became options with Turkey Run State Park winning out. It was a 4 ½ drive, promised 80 degree weather, and showed potential for interesting hiking. It did not disappoint.

The drive wasn’t bad. After St. Louis it’s a straight shot across central Illinois to Terre Haute then up from there. Once into Indiana we decided to check out the covered bridges.

Here’s Katie’s take on the covered bridges.

After the covered bridges, we headed to the park to get our camp set up. (Remember we entered the Eastern Time Zone, so we lost an hour.) We were only staying one night, so we packed the very basics, except for Katie’s huge tent for overnight camping. Tent was up, firewood was bought, and backpacks were ready, so we were ready to go.

The majority, ok ALL of my family, was amazed that I was going camping let alone tent camping. Now I’ve camped back when I was younger  suffering through no water, pit toilets, and no electric. And then when I had a say, I decided I didn’t want to camp anymore. (I’m sure that will be a blog later.)

So here we are ready to go. I will say that we did a poor job of eating beforehand. We both had a quick breakfast, but lunch was a cup of ice cream next to the mill. We  couldn’t find a place up to our standards on the way up, so we just didn’t eat. We didn’t want to waste our time on fast food and options were limited. We did have some granola and cliff bars as we hiked.

We drove over to the park part and had already paid our $9 out of state entry fee at the campground, so we were waved through. There were not any signs directing us to trailheads or starting points. We referred to our paper map, picked a parking spot, and headed out in what we thought was the right direction, but that led us to the bathrooms. We regrouped and decided to follow the majority of the people.

Now we did a quick overview in the parking lot about which trails to do first because at this point we had no intentions of doing all of them. (The whole trail system is numbered 1-11 and several trials overlap. At one point we came to a trial roundabout with four different options.) We decided to do #1 and #2 on the nearest side of the creek and then crossover the bridge. Of course we needed to try and see every marked point of interest because that’s how we are – adventurers you know.

So off we set at a good pace on a nice wide dirt path. No spiderwebs in sight to slow us down. We stopped at the few marked spots along the way and took the required photos. The main interest point was seeing another covered bridge. We were not disappointed. About half way along #1, the view opened up and we could see the bridge up ahead. If the water hadn’t been brown, it would have been perfect.

After visiting the Narrows Covered Bridge, we moved onto #2 to circle back to what I would call the trailhead. At this point we were about 2 miles in with the intention of doing #3 and #4.

To get to the majority of the trails, you have to cross the suspension bridge. Katie and I aren’t fond of heights, but this wasn’t bad and it only had a little wiggle. (I would say the bridge and ladders were our main reason for choosing this place for our road trip.)

Check out the wiggle here:

After crossing the bridge, there were several different ways to go though not exactly clearly marked. We found ourselves referring to our paper maps quite often, and yet at times still a little confused. Katie even asked a few locals who were heading out. They mumbled something like “9, 3 yeah 4 those are all good.” So we set out to do the trails we wanted to make sure we did first and then were going to see how we felt after that.  

In Missouri the trails are for the most part clearly marked and look like a path. I can’t say the same for Indiana. There were occasional wooden posts with arrows marking the intended direction, but those paths included streams, crevices, rocks piles, and of course the ladders. In Missouri we stop and take those views in while Indiana allows you to climb all over them. The elevation gain was only like 300 feet but we did it about ten times.

At times we were like “I can’t believe people let their kids on these trails.” Which is of course the same thing people probably say about Johnson Shut-ins.

I’m not going to go into every detail about all 11 trails, but we took in some beautiful sights and faced a few fears. Have I mentioned the ladders?  Our intentions were to go up the ladders, but like everything on this trip we went at it backwards, so down we went.

Here is a little video of what it is like 

At about mile seven I believe I mentioned that I wasn’t really tired but my legs were starting to feel it and about the same time we decided we had enough daylight to finish up the other three trails on this side of the park. Not very logical reasoning on my part. It was also about this same time that we found what looked like a path on number 9. In Missouri it would have been a path. But we were wrong and a tad bit misguided. Not lost – we knew we had to follow the river back to another path but the “should have been a path” path disappeared. We kept following along Sugar Creek but then we ran into a ravine. So that meant heading back up the hill to find what should have been the path. Being off the beatin’ path, we encountered a number of cobwebs. It’s like we attract them.

We finally found that official trail and was back on our way.  After finishing out this last trail on this side, we put in an official 10.17 miles.  Never in my life did I think we would hike 10 miles on that first day.  But we did and I survived.

We had intentions of going back to the camp and cook a simple meal over the fire, but we decided we were too tired and opted for a more convenient option – Burger King!  Bacon King Cheeseburgers and onion rings to be exact.  We actually sat in the parking lot and ate our meal because we didn’t want to wait the 10 miles back to camp.

Later that evening we did the simple camping life of starting a fire (which we did on our own without any lighter fluid! Of course the roll of toilet paper leftover in my trunk from TPing season came in handy.)  We enjoyed the fire then headed off to sleep in the peacefulness of hearing the conversations of other campers.  The sites were very close lol.  We only had one night visitor of baby raccoon in the tree above the tent.

All in all it was a good first day.

Our plans for the next morning were to tackle the few remaining trails left in Turkey Run State Park then possibly check out the trails at Shades State Park just up the road.  Before that we managed to make another fire and I cooked a simple breakfast of steel cut oats. We used the mess kit size pans, so we could practice in case we ever work up to overnight camping.  It was a successful breakfast!

We tackled the two trails near the Inn first which lead us by the Lieber Cabin and I found another CCC project wall. We crossed under an old bridge and the crossed back over it on a different trail. This also lead us by the Juliet Strauss memorial as well as the old church.  These two trails were filled with up and down stairs and ravines, but we powered on and finished  up.

Katie found some unexpected inspiration which you can read about here.

That left just a couple left back on the other side of creek and back near the covered bridge.  These trails didn’t offer as many views but did lead us to the Lusk home.  The Lusks originally lived on the land and their home is preserved.  I normally don’t miss a home tour but unfortunately we didn’t pass by during operating hours. I did find it interesting that the only grave near the home was of a two year old daughter named Caroline.  I don’t run across many other Carolines.

At this point our time at Turkey Run was coming to an end with another 6 miles under our belts.  We headed back to camp and packed up our things.  We ready to head out and try one more place. Our intentions were to try the numbered trails at Shades SP, but after a short picnic lunch we decided to try the Pine Hills Nature Preserve Trails.  It offered  intriguing points of interest called Turkey’s Backbone and the Devil’s Backbone.  We also read a promising review on AllTrails from Samantha B.

Hidden gem! Scenic forest, cliffs, stream.  Lots of stairs. Extremely steep drop offs on Turkey Backbone and Devils Backbone.  Like, if you misstep or lose your balance you will die. Legit.  Be very attentive to children.

This could possibly our first brush with death!  I was willing to check it out.  This promised to be interesting because Katie and I are both afraid of heights.  

Our new goal was to reach another 10 miles today for a total of 20 miles.  This trail was going to put us close to reaching that.  About a third of the way into the trail we encountered more steps going down which meant we would see them again coming back.  We knew we were in some heights because of the “No Rappelling” signs.  

We first crossed the turkey’s backbone.  It was a steep drop-off but had a pretty wide path.  We were doing okay so far.  Further into the trail, we ran into more terrain that was the path but didn’t really look like a path. Then we met the Devil’s backbone.  We had to cross a rock path probably two feet wide with steep drop-offs on both sides. We both took a few seconds to gather ourselves and did it.  Did it one at time just in case but we did it.  Too some not a huge feat but to us another step in conquering that fear of heights.  After the backbone, there was the choice of climbing up or shuffling around a ledge.  We each chose a different path and survived.  It was all downhill from here or unless until we had to go back up those steps. The only way to rate this trail would be to say, “we had to crawl twice.”  Enough said.

So in the end we completed our 20.09 miles in less than 24 hours.  So this adventure was over.  It was time to head home so that we did with one more stop left on way.  Food!

We hadn’t had any great local food on the way up so we wanted to find something on the way  home.  The Grand Traverse Pie Company in Terre Haute was the winner.  After our late lunch, we both selected our pie choices and then were ready to head home.  

A total of 36 hours and our adventure was over.  It wasn’t Arkansas but we made the most of it.  Indiana treated us well.

We would encourage anyone who is interested in hiking and willing to travel a bit to make the drive.  Turkey Run State will not disappoint.

Check out Turkey Run State Park

Check out Pine Hills Nature Preserve