Turkey Run State Park, Indiana

May 20, 2025

In the past, much of our experience with Indiana has been diagonally across the state along I-65. If you enjoy driving through nondescript landscape with minimal topography, intimidating wind farms, Indianapolis, and increasing traffic as you near Chicago, then that's the road trip for you. Nowadays, we much prefer the quieter byways like the one we rode to Turkey Run State Park.

Saying goodbye to Lake Patoka

Rolling hills of southern Indiana

The weather was warm and sunny upon our arrival at Turkey Run State Park. We had been to this park with the kids once, but that was a long time ago, so it kind of felt "new to us" this time around. Our campsite was solidly in the "fine" category--nothing special, but pleasant.

The hiking trails are the main attraction here, and by Midwest standards, they are quite nice. Many of the trails follow along seasonal stream beds. Fortunately, these stream beds weren't actively flowing (at least not too much). So, aside from a bit of mud, hiking was a lot of fun.

Our first hike was on Friday morning. Near the trailhead, we spotted a school bus with lots of kids milling about. We quickened our pace in an attempt to secure a decent buffer between us and them.

The historic suspension bridge over Sugar Creek

It was at this point that we started hearing the field trip kids gaining ground on us. No sooner had we disembarked the bridge, when a stampede of excited, screaming 4th-ish graders ran onto the bridge. We quickened our pace once again.

For a while, we didn't dare stop

Julie made an exception to (quickly) take a picture of this five-lined skink

We finally lost them!

Fun ladder to climb!

Lots of up and down on these trails

Tulip tree flower

Falls Canyon

Fun steps in the rock

A narrow ledge above the stream bed

The Punch Bowl

Friday afternoon brought the threat of severe thunderstorms and a tornado watch. We decided to close up the deck and hang out at the Turkey Run Inn, seeing that it was an old brick and stone structure with a basement. We packed a picnic dinner, our laptops, and some cards in case we needed to stay there for a while.

Turkey Run Inn

We parked ourselves in the sheltered 2nd story veranda and watched the storms go by

One of the storms that went by had some gusty winds--enough to take out the power at the inn for a couple of hours. That was the worst of it, and after a few hours, the tornado watch was cancelled and we headed back to the campground. Aside from some small branches littering the ground, the campground survived unscathed. We were glad we weren't a couple of hours south in Bloomington where a tornado touched down and they had baseball sized hail!

We hiked some other trails right off the campground on Sunday and revisited the inn.

Overlooking Sugar Creek at Sunset Point

The veranda over the main entrance was where we "camped out" on Friday during the storms

Quaint old ping pong table with a chunk of wood for a net

Cozy lobby

Rick had noticed a slow leek on the tire that we got patched in Nova Scotia last year (same tire, but new hole), so we found a small repair shop nearby on Monday to have them take a look. Even though the hole was kind of close to the edge of the tire (this always seems to happen to us, and most big tire places only want to replace the tire rather than repair it), they did agree to patch it. Yay!

We had a rainy day again on Tuesday (must be springtime), so that was a good opportunity to catch up on the blog, make bread, and start packing for our upcoming Chicago visit. The camper will be parked in DeKalb, Illinois while we celebrate Julie's parents' 60th wedding anniversary in the Chicago area next week!

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