With my birthday falling on a Sunday this year, I had told the girls early in the summer that I wanted to try to get away for the weekend as a family to celebrate. We tossed around a couple of places that were within driving distance and I came up with several different spots, but they ultimately let me pick, so I settled on Turkey Run, which has always been a family favorite. Then the girls asked for the entire weekend off of work and I started looking for places to camp / stay overnight. As the time got closer, I realized that two nights away might be more than we could realistically make happen, so we changed the plans to just be overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
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On Saturday morning, after Melayna got back home from her xc run, we packed up the car and drove down to Turkey Run State Park.
We arrived at the park right at lunch time so we parked in the large parking lot by the nature center and enjoyed our packed lunches before heading down towards the suspension bridge, which leads over to the best trails in the park. We would hike trails #3 and #10 before heading back to the van to grab more water and a few snacks and then we headed back out to hike trails #1 and #2 which run together for a while.
Trail #3 was really, really busy as everyone loves trail #3 and we couldn't believe how many people (and dogs) were hiking on Saturday. It was probably the busiest that I have ever seen, so it was nicer later in the day when we switched to another trail and things quieted down quite a bit.
The gang is all here....right at the foot of the bridge.
We started off at the entrance to #3 and got into the long line of people hiking through the beautiful canyons and along the river bed. It was really nice and cool and we had such a fun time hiking all together. Nolan was hesitant about the trails at first, but he quickly changed his mind and decided that they were a lot of fun and that he would be our guide.
I know that this is the first picture that I took at the beginning of the trail, but these next pictures just uploaded in random order. I'm not really sure where I took them... just somewhere along trail #3 or #10.
At one point we hiked over to a look-out but the trees had grown up so thick that we couldn't see anything over the edge.
Rest is over.
Back to more hiking...
Our favorite part of the trail is when you get to the section with the ladders that you have to climb down. Since the trail was really busy and there were a lot of dogs and young children, there was a bottleneck at this point of the trail. We stood for a few minutes waiting until it was our time to go down the first ladder and then we all went down as quickly as possible.
Once we got to the bottom, we moved out of the way for the people who needed to climb up, and then we waited again until the second and third ladders were available.
As we neared the end of the trails, we came up to the rocks that hang over the river. Noel and Nolan immediately ran up to the top to sit and then the rest of us joined them one at a time.
After a couple walked by and saw Morgan standing at the bottom taking pictures, she offered to take pictures of us all together. She did great - we only wish that she had taken them a little farther away so you could see how high we really were....
There are two or three large boulders in a row so after we all climbed down, Noel and Nolan ran over to the next one and climbed that one too.
"Yay! Great job! We can drink to that!!"
Seriously... Marissa was demonstrating how one of the lifeguards at work drink water and we all got a good laugh out of that one.
Anyway.... back to climbing.
After a while, we were back to the main bridge with two trails completed so we decided to walk back to the van to get more to eat and drink.
After our break, we headed back down to the bridge but instead of crossing to the other side this time, we branched off to the right and walked trails #1 and #2. After walking those two, we would be done for the day because trail #9 was impassable in places and closed due to high water.
After the ruggedness of the first two, these trails seemed easier and the girls even talked about coming back the next day and running them as part of Laynie's xc training.
We finished hiking right around 6:00, so we decided to leave the park and make the drive back to the nearest town where our rented camper was located. We would meet the hosts, get checked in, and make our dinner for the night.
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