Today we're showing you Ledges State Park. It is one of Iowa's oldest and most popular state parks.
We kept driving from where you saw us last at that Walmart in Nebraska through the rest of the state,
and we're about mid-central Iowa at the moment. And as we continue our way to Michigan
we wanted to stop over and check something out, and this state park looked really interesting.
We're gonna do some hiking today, show you some of the canyon and the cliff walls and the stream bed
and all of that interesting stuff to be found here. The campground is also really great if you
want to camp in Iowa. We arrived in the evening last night fairly late and got a really nice spot.
The campground has a playground, has all the regular amenities, has almost
100 spots. You definitely can't write off Iowa state parks. They're a really great value. It's
only $18 a night for full hookups here which is perfect for us coming across this way. We
can stop and do laundry and get some stuff done. It's also a nice way to break up the drive. And
there's tons of really neat things to see here in this park. Let's show you Ledges.
That was really fun. I knew that there were some river crossings with vehicles on this canyon
drive, but I didn't really know what to expect. In fact on the website and the phone number it
still says this road is closed, but as you saw it's open. So the playground at the campground
was pretty much flooded last night, but by this morning a lot of it had dried up.
So maybe this morning they reassessed and opened it up. So we get to keep going.
We have driven down Canyon Drive to where we get our first views of the little canyon that this
park is known for, and it makes a good spot to stop and have a picnic. This little creek behind
us is called Pea's Creek, and typically the water is only about ankle deep. That is a great way for
anybody and especially families with kids to see the park is if you can go for a little stream walk
in the creek and enjoy it that way. Ledges was proposed as a state park as early as 1914 and
then by 1924 it was official which makes it one of the first state parks in Iowa as we mentioned.
The CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, also built numerous structures here. Not all of them
still exist I think potentially due to flooding or deterioration over the years, but there are
several including a beautiful stone bridge that is right over here that we're gonna check out next.
Really I think if all you came out here to do was to picnic and play in the river and just enjoy the
picnic grounds, that would be a good afternoon. Exactly, but there's more so we're going to show
you just a little bit of the four miles of scenic trails around here and overlooks. That's next.
It's definitely steep, but the nice thing about that is that you
have views on both sides of the trail. Looking forward to getting to the top.
We are standing in the Crow's Nest here. We actually got here a little bit quicker than
we thought we would. It's kind of funny because our kids were like crow's nest? Doesn't look at
all like a crow's nest. So I don't think they were quite picturing what we were picturing.
It's just almost like a little deck area with a fence and a view of the Des Moines River out here.
And they say that the sandstone cliffs here can be up to about 100 feet high over the Des Moines. I
think that's probably the elevation change we're seeing from here to there. And this whole park
has a history of being flooded by that river since it's so close. If you stick around with
us we're going to show you the flood pole that will show some of the depth of those floods.
So instead of heading back down the Old Indian Trail like we first thought we would, because we
got here so fast we're just gonna continue on the Crow's Nest Trail, and it's a loop.
As you can see we've made it down from the bluffs, and at the road we again saw that we're right by
Pea's Creek so we came in to explore. And I'm so glad that the water level has gone down, that
it's calmer, because this is truthfully one of the best parts of this whole park is just being able
to come and walk in the water and play with the kids. They're having a ball. There are numerous
other hikes that we would recommend including the ones that take you to Inspiration Point,
Table Rock, and the Council's Ring. We may or may not get to those while we're here for our visit.
We actually came back the next day to hike along the ridge above where we played in the river.
These short steep trails led up to the Council Ring,
and down to Table Rock for sweeping views of the canyon road below.
Definitely check those out as well. Lots of hikes on both sides
of the river. After our loop hike from the Crow's Nest we had to go over one of the
water crossings by foot to head back to the truck. On the way we stopped at one
of the tallest sandstone walls in the park which was full of swallow nests.
Next we drove to the bottom of the canyon. To round out our trip here to Ledges State Park
we stopped at the bottom of Canyon Drive here to the flood pole. It's amazing to see visually
that in 1993 this area flooded 25 and a half feet from the Des Moines River right back here. Pretty
impressive. So this has been a fun day in the park, and we hope that you guys get a chance to
come to Iowa, see some of the amazing state parks, this or Maquoketa or any of the others.
It's worth it. So we'll see you guys on the next adventure as we continue our travels to Michigan.
Bug on your face now. Oh, can you get it? Yeah. Nice. And can you
wipe next to your eye, you have sleep around. All sorts of good stuff here.
Is that better? No. Rumor has it, this right here is where Frodo agreed to take the ring to Mordor.
In all seriousness, we have no idea what this is. We think it's some kind of CCC construction thing,
but we don't actually know what it is. If anybody actually knows please let us know in the comments.