Category: Hiking Trails

  • Lakeside at the Campground

    Hillsdale State Park, Kansas, October 2025 There are no campsites next to the lake in the Sunflower Campground at Hillsdale State Park. There is a short, maybe 1/4 mile trail that goes to the lakeside from either corner of the campground. The area along the trail and the lake is mowed with a picnic table…

  • Bluebird Trail

    Hillsdale State Park, KS, October 2025 This week has been and will be a week of rain. It rained Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Rain is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. The Sun will hopefully come out on Thursday in time for us to prepare to move to a different campsite within the same park. Today…

  • Clinton SP North Shore Trails

    Lawrence, KS, October 2025 In 2024, John hiked part of the white and blue trails, and, for some reason, I did not. I’m not exactly sure why. Potentially, my Achilles was hurting, or I went shopping 🙂 This year we did a little of each trail all on the same hike. John said that the…

  • It’s a Blue Bird, not a Bluebird!

    Lake Vermillion State Recreation Area, SD, August 2025 We planned to rent paddle boards to putter around the lake today. John had been planning to hike the Otter Stream trail with the tripod to try to get better pictures of some of the subjects from the last hike. Since it was still early, he decided…

  • Palisades State Park

    Garretson, SD, August 2025 Today was supposed to be a reasonably nice day with sun and no rain. So, we decided to visit Palisades State Park in South Dakota which is about 45 minutes from our current campground. We set the car GPS and off we went. Needless to say, the car GPS took us…

  • Hike The Otter Stream Trail, Not This One

    Lake Vermillion State Recreation Area, SD, July 2025 Lake Vermillion State Recreation Area has a figure 8 hiking trail in the western camping area that circles the Maple Campground and passes near Juniper and Oak Campground. The trail is flat smooth and wide. It appears to be a mowed path through the prairie about 4…

  • Wind Cave Canyon Hiking Trail

    Wind Cave National Monument, SD, July 2025 We needed to test the time to get to Wind Cave National Monument to make sure we would leave in time for our cave tours next week. To do this, we planned a trip down to Wind Cave to go hiking. Based on what Kate read, the Wind…

  • Barnes Canyon Trail

    Custer State Park, SD, July 2025 We needed to get some exercise, so we decided to go hiking. Since all the places that we wanted to hike had rattlesnakes or poison ivy, we decided to hike on Barnes Canyon Trail. Since we could not decide which direction to hike from, Kate picked “B”, and we…

  • Jewel Cave National Monument & Canyon Hike

    Jewel Cave National Monument, SD, July 2025 There are 3 national monuments within an hour of Custer State Park. The monuments are Jewel Cave National Monument, Wind Cave National Monument and Mount Rushmore National Monument. Jewel Cave has a .25 mile, 3.5 mile, and 5.5 mile hike near it. The .25 miles hike starts and…

  • Yellowstone National Park Day 37

    Yellowstone National Park, WY, June 2025 This was a very long day. We left at 8 am and did not make it back home until after 8 pm. We immediately grabbed our shower gear and left again. Finally, we were back in the trailer for the night around 9 pm which would 10 pm central…