Turkey Run State Park - A Drive-by Visit

 

If my canopy, which normally sits over that bare spot beside the greenhouse, has been taken down

and strapped into The Van along with my camp-chair, (which is also my living-room chair) and it's August, that can only mean one thing.

It's time to head out for the family reunion up in Michigan.

At 0400 the morning of the 3rd I hit the road.

It was still dark, actual sunrise being a good three hours away. I don't usually have much need to drive in the dark anymore, but of the last 40 days, 37 of them have been 100 degrees or more, so, in an attempt to get some miles in before things heated up too much, I got a jump on the day thinking that if The Van got too heat-stressed along the way I could park through the worst of the day's heat and still keep to a reasonable schedule.

When leaving home, which is somewhere in or around that fuzzy pink blob, (Oh come on! You didn't honestly think I was going to pinpoint home did you!) and heading for Michigan my usual first-night layover is at the I-40 rest area just west of Forest City Arkansas.

That's about 12 road-hours from the house.

I often read bloggers that find 4 to 6 road-hours in a day to be their limit, and I understand that. Really I do. Hell, The Wife can just barely tolerate the 2 hour trip back from the city when we make our groceries run. When we hit the gate, which takes some time to open so we have to sit and wait for it, she's stripping her seat-belt off, gathering up her stuff, and it wouldn't surprise me if one day she got out, impatiently squeezed through the opening gate, and walked the rest of the way. (Well - actually it would since it's downhill on ungraded gravel which is really pushing the limits of what she can navigate on foot without breaking something!)

But for some reason I personally don't find long days behind the wheel all that uncomfortable or tiring. At least not yet. I fully expect that as I continue to age some limitations on that will start to appear, but for now - - -

With The Van behaving despite the heat and the sun still pretty high in the sky  when I got to Forest City at around 1600, I decided that it was too early to stop, especially since I knew of another place a few hours further along, so I just rolled right on by.

The Missouri Welcome Center is at mile 30 on I-55. It's not the best place I know of to overnight, what with auto-parking being on the highway side of the facilities, (since I don't need the space I'm reluctant to take up a truck spot on the more sheltered side of the facilities because there always seems to be a shortage of them, truck-sized slots, and unlike a trucker just about to run out of hours who will get penalized if he keeps on driving, no one is tracking my hours and I can squeeze in just about anywhere) but the place is well-lit, secure, the facilities are fairly modern, and kept clean by an on-site crew. And really, all I need is a place where I can park for a few hours without bothering anybody.

This time I actually stopped, but it was still only 1900.

I got out, peed, walked out a few of the kinks on the little loop around the facilities, looked up at the sun, figured it was still a couple hours above the horizon and there'd be nearly another hour of twilight after that. So, being boss and head bottle washer of this circus, I determined that I wasn't feeling particularly knackered yet, and climbed back behind the wheel.

Now I had my sights set on the Marion Walmart yet a few more hours up the road where I've also overnighted before.

I pulled into the Walmart parking lot during the last of the light and this time, after putting in 16 hours on the road, and being a little hungry, (I usually don't eat when driving in order to avoid the drowsy factor - not to mention that whole belly-flopping-over-the-belt issue) I stayed stopped this time.

Waking up the next morning in the parking lot of the Marion Walmart I realize I'm about 6 hours ahead of my normal schedule so, in order to use those six hours productively, I set my sights on Turkey Run State Park in Indiana.

I can't tell you, mostly because I don't keep track, how many times I've driven right by the entrance, but so far had never stopped.

Now I know that Turkey Run may not seem like it's on the route from Central Texas to Michigan, but having a mild aversion to cities, I haven't driven through Indianapolis, the more obvious route, in many - many - years.

I used to take I-70 across Indiana to about halfway between Terre Haute and Indianapolis then turn north on 231 and start skirting my way around the city. But one year a chunk of I-70, including at least one key bridge, just east of Terre Haute went under construction and it was a friggin mess! So I started wandering north out of Terre Haute instead to avoid the backups and found I liked this even more circuitous route, which passes right by the entrance to Turkey Run State Park, even better so I kinda abandoned 231 except for a very short chunk of it in Crawfordsville.

But with an extra 6 hours in the bank I decided today was a good day to stick my nose into the usually bypassed state park and check it out.

Although one state away from where I spent the night the park is a relatively short 4 hour drive from Marion so it wasn't yet 10 when I paid my $9 at the entrance and drove on in. ($7 for state residents.)

At 2400 acres this is a fairly decent sized park that really has a split personality.

In some ways it's more resort than park.

In addition to the campground there's an historic hotel, cabins, large swimming pool complex, and nature center.

But it also has a series of somewhat tough, decidedly un-resort-like, trails for those not so enamored with the resort lifestyle.

First thing I did was poke my head into the Nature Center.

It's small but seemed to do a good job of getting the salient points about the area across, including several interactive displays aimed at the kid in all of us.

I say seems because, despite what it looks like in the photo, there were just a few too many people wandering around as if COVID had never happened, so I didn't stay in there very long.

OK, OK, so it's possible I'm slightly overusing COVID as an excuse to avoid people, but it fits so well into my preferred lifestyle!

As I was running away leaving the Nature Center I checked out the trail-map I found just inside the door.

Trail 3, listed as Very Rugged looked pretty interesting but there was a also a red-lettered notice just above the map dispenser noting that a section of Trail 3 was closed due to a downed tree.

On top of that, there were enough people around that when I saw that a section of this trail is called Ladders (they really are ladders used to negotiate a particularly challenging series of rock walls and waterfalls) I had visions of Angel's Landing in Zion National Park or the Guadalupe Peak trail in Guadalupe National Park. These are places that are consistently jammed nuts-to-butts with sheep-like herds of people that think it's some sort of badge of honor to bag a feature like that even though thousands upon thousands do it every year. (Hell, you have to hope to win a lottery at Angel's landing just to secure one of the nuts-to-butts entry passes required to hike the trail!)

Not that I'm against sheep-like herds of people! By all means, flock to these "special" spots and leave the rest of the wilderness for those of us that would rather not be smelling the farts of the hiker in front of us. 

Trail 4, looping around there in the top right of the map, listed as moderately rugged and a few tenths longer than Trail 3, seemed like a better, less likely to be crowded, alternative. (I was right about the lack of crowds on this trail except for the stretch along Sugar Creek.)

But since many of the trails here, including Trail 4, are on the other side of Sugar Creek I first had to get across the suspension bridge down there behind the Nature Center.

And that wasn't quite as straightforward as you might expect.

There's a whole network of pathways there behind the Nature Center and a noticeable lack of signage.

But I just kept heading downhill

and soon found the 70 steps shelter,

named for the adjacent 70 steps leading down to the riverbank (Spoiler alert! I only counted 67 steps.) and

the tower supporting the south end of the bridge.

By the way, in 2013 Sugar Creek was up to just below the bottom of that sign

which put it just over the bridge-deck. This may account for some of the trail-markings issues I just mentioned, but come on! 9 years to replace a few posts?

Another spoiler alert - having just come down the 70 - or 67 - steps you now have to climb back up a couple dozen 

to get up to the bridge-deck.

which carries you (well, you don't get carried, you have to walk!) across Sugar Creek.

But here there was yet another issue with finding the trail.

The far end of the bridge actually dead-ends into a vertical rock wall and in keeping with the theme started on the other bank, trail signage was spotty to say the least.

My original intent was to turn east at the end of the bridge and follow Trail 4 around counter-clockwise.

Except there is no east at the end of the bridge, only a left - west - which dumps you out onto a well trampled bit of muddy ground with not a single trail-marker around.

At this point the only way I could see to get onto the section of Trail 4 that I intended was to cling to a ledge and inch my way across a rock-face.

Well that couldn't be right!

Surely they don't expect people to come over here with climbing gear just to follow one of the trails?!

In fact there's a big sign on that rock wall at the end of the bridge saying that climbing the faces is prohibited.

Being flexible - when I'm forced to be - I decided to follow Trail 3 north along an unnamed tributary through Rocky Hollow, to where it intersected with the north end of trail 4 near the Punch Bowl and then take Trail 4 clockwise, which would eventually, hopefully, dump me back out in the vicinity of the bridge and let me figure out where the trail actually is at that point.

But there was still the issue of no trail markers and I ended up

taking a short side-trip west towards Trail 10 before deciding I was on the wrong path. (Trail wise. Not life wise!) I backtracked through the surprisingly dense-ish weekday crowd (For me two groups of 3 spaced out 50 yards or so is dense!) and eventually figured out where the hell I was supposed to be going!

Despite being age-qualified myself but too dumb to admit it, this is not your grandfather's trail!

In fact in parts it's not so much a trail as the bed of a stream. One with just enough water in it to make things really slick.

Prophetically it reminded me of Illinois' Little Grand Canyon where I busted my ass in a place very much like this once. - Oh, and no, I didn't fall here - I'll get to the prophetically part in a later post.

But eventually I made it far enough up that section of Trail 3 to find the beginning of Trail 4 right there at the U-turn at the north end of my hike.

Where I started seeing trail-markers.

Yeah right! Now that I already knew where I was!

Once up and away from that tributary the trail got really rather civilized and plush.

Of course it helps that along here it's also used as maintenance access with a authorized-users-only connection out to a little road along the boarder of the park.

After a little more than a half mile of gentle woods-hiking the trail pops out into a clearing

where the Lusk house sits.

The Lusk's, specifically the father, who pretty much founded the community here, and later his reclusive son, were instrumental in preserving this area of virgin woods and getting it into the hands of the state to be turned into a park in the early 1900's.

Not far from the house is the well-preserved covered bridge that used to carry the county road over Sugar Creek.

Its concrete replacement is just up stream, and just beyond that is the site of the Salmon Lusk Mill that was the primary driver of the development in the area.

The site of the mill is marked on the map but I could see no sign of it.

What I could see was this clearly purposefully shaped platform on the bank opposite the mill site, just east of the new bridge.

That slot is about 6 feet deep but I could find no explanation beyond personal speculation as to its origin or purpose.

From here back to the suspension bridge the trail was back to following more rugged terrain alongside Sugar Creek.

and before getting back to where I started I came across

this small coal mine perilously close to the creek's bank. (you know - flood wise.)

The mine was too small to be a commercial venture so was used as sort of a private energy-source to keep the Lusk household running instead.

The trail guide lists Trail 4 as being 2 miles long. After I added in the trip down to and back up from the suspension bridge, the bit of Trail 3 you have to take to get to the northern terminus of Trail 4, and my usual additional bit of wanderings along the way, the GPS said I had hiked a quarter mile less than 4 miles.

By the time I made my way back across the suspension bridge, (Now I know how to find the southern end of Trail 4 - so easy it was embarrassing!) back to The Van, had a snack, and relaxed a little, I had just about enough time to get to my next overnight spot before dark.

But remember several posts ago when I said I made three stops along the way while getting to and from the reunion? Two old that I'd been to before and two new that I hadn't?

Well to make the math work you should know that I stopped here at Turkey creek again on my way back, making this place a twofer. Once new and once old.

So we'll be back here again in a couple posts exploring other areas of the park.