backpacking @ yellow river state forest

This is our version of a starry night.

Last Friday, Nic and I loaded up the car and the pup and headed up to NE Iowa/almost Minnesota for a weekend backpacking trip at Yellow River State Forest.

We pulled in to our first campground around 9:30 on Friday night, set up the tent and settled in for a chilly night's rest.

Or not.

It was cold. And since we were planning on backpacking, we were under prepared for the October like temperatures.

The night was a restless one. Trying to get comfortable on the hardest ground that was selected to stake our tent. Trying to keep our fingers and toes warm.

We went from tent to car and back to the tent.

We got maybe 3 hours of actual sleep.



Including Maia.



Maia and I were up early for a short walk around the grounds before finally rousing Nic with the bribe of running into town for coffee before we set off.

Harpers Ferry, Iowa =/= town.

With a cute name like Harpers Ferry and being right along the river, you'd think there would be more than just the 34,092 trailers that really make up the town.

Gas station coffee would have to suffice.



Thankfully, views like this peaked our interest and got us moving.





Tired, cold, but ready to hike.



With all of our gear...



Nic was our tent/clothes mule.



And I carried the food. Even though we would never veer very far from well travel roads, if something did happen and we got stuck in the woods, we would have been able to survive for at least a few days off of all of the nutrient dense food I packed, as well as the multiple liters of water that we carried.

This may have been where our demise lied.



Ready to go!





We were geared up and ready to tackle the 25 miles spread between Saturday and Sunday.





A black diamond hiking trail? In Iowa?



Yep. The first 2-3 miles were pretty much uphill.



We were thinking of doing a night hike on Friday to get to the first backpacking campground, but thankfully decided otherwise.



Of course we instantly compared this hike to our Alaska hike that we did in 2007. I mean, you can't really compare the two, but the trails were similar.





And unlike Alaska, the piles of poo belonged to a far more friendly creature than a bear.



We finally conquered the hill and were happy rest. We decided that we need to create a "backpackers bench" with an additional ledge to set the bottom park of your pack on.





Short sections of the trail were along the road.



And parts of it were along an equestrian trail.



Despite being a beautiful hike, a few factors forced us to throw in the towel a measly 2 hours into our trip.

We trekked back to the car, and decided to do a driving/hiking tour back home along the Mississippi River.



A beautifully scenic drive that we would recommend to anyone. You drive along rolling country roads, with church steeples towering over the horizon.



And you find churches like this in little itty bitty towns like New Vienna.



It was like our road trip in Sweden, scoping out all of the churches that Nic's ancestors attended.



We took a slight tour to see the Field of Dreams movie sight.



Now that I've seen where the movie takes place, I should probably see the movie, right??



Another small town church.



We stopped in a few more towns (Lansing, Marquette, Guttenberg) - mostly in search of a nice coffee shop (for which there were surprisingly few despite being quite popular small towns) and a few attractions (the forementioned Field of Dreams, Effigy Mounds National Monument - need to go back there to hike soon!) along the way before I forced us to stop and actually hike.

The weekend, gall darnit, was supposed to be a hiking tour of NE Iowa, not a driving tour!

So we stopped at Bellevue State Park for a few miles of hiking.



How talented is Maia - drinking straight from the water bottle!

We stopped for a beer before hitting the road again.



And took a wrong turn that landed us in Illinois.

No problem, we just toured the "right" side of the Mississippi (as Nic called it) instead of the "left" for a few miles before crossing back over into Iowa.



A great name for a restaurant. I was really hoping to use this name for my future cafe, but guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board on that one...



We drove threw the small town of Thompson, Illinois and spotted this gem. The Heirloom Market & Cafe is basically the store of my dreams - but on a much larger scale. Fresh local produce is available for sale, with a wide variety of bulk foods item, and a small cafe/coffee shop/bakery tucked in to the back corner.

Washington needs a place like this. And I am the person to do it. Any investors out there looking for a great project?

After this stop, which did include a few coffees and a huge slice of carrot cake, we made a bee-line back to Washington and our nice cushy mattress.

Even though it didn't live up to all of the expectations that I had, our weekend was perfect.

But we will be back to Yellow River State Forest again before winter to tackle the 25 miles of backpacking.