After looking for a new backpacking location close to eastern Iowa, we decided that Yellow River State park was the place to try. It has good reviews, reported to be a great location to prepare for hiking in the Rockies, one hiker said that the hill to get to one camp site was very challenging. Let's go!
Luckily, Google Maps got me there alright. Some of the streets in the tiny town right before the turn off to Yellow River weren't labeled, making navigation difficult, but I got there okay. The person I was meeting there regrettably used MSN maps (didn't even know they had that) and it very much got him lost. Word to the wise; always bring an atlas, even with gps.
Do to the reviews saying how challenging the hike was, we had planned to get to the first camps site and call it a day. Well, we are both avid hikers and quickly got to where we had planned to be way too fast. Okay, no problem. We headed to the second camp site...and got there quickly. Okay, we thought, let's try for the last one. This last camp site must be the one with the terrible hill, because we had not come across anything challenging yet. We got to the last backpacking only camp site with no problem and decided to stop there. All in, we hiked about 8 miles.
The hike was lovely; lots of flowers, trees, and flowing water. We didn't see too many other people and the weather was relatively nice for late summer in Iowa. This wasn't the terribly challenging course that we expected, but it was nice. We did stick mostly to the hiking only trails, as they also have equestrian camp grounds and trails.
I would recommend this area for a nice weekend backpacking trip as long as the people involved are in relatively decent condition.
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