Turkey Run State Park

Almost due east of Springfield, Illinois is Turkey Run State Park in Marshall, Indiana. We spent 2 days at the lodge in the park. The topography reminded me some of Hocking Hills, Ohio. I had hoped to drive around to the covered bridges in Parke County Monday, but the rain made the dirt roads sloppy mud, and the turnoffs to the bridges were poorly marked.

It was still quite warm late Saturday afternoon when we arrived. We did some walking but found our paths turned into mud holes in many places. People were paddling rented canoes down Sugar Creek. The park was full of visitors.

 

Sunday morning dawned gray and cloudy. We had breakfast at the lodge. As we started our hike, we knew rain could start anytime. About half way through, a mist fell, but by the last mile or so we had light but steady rain. We had to circumnavigate lots of boggy muddy places on the trail left from rain earlier in the week. I wish I knew more about wildflowers; they abounded in the April damp. I was able to find on the internet later the names of some of the flowers.

We tried to stick on trails that didn’t have a lot of steps, but there was nothing absolutely flat.

Violets I knew; I also saw one white trillium and a jack-in-the-pulpit.

Other plants I identified later were buttercups, toadshade, and bluebells.

There were whole areas of bluebells, some already blue, but a lot of them still transitioning from pink to purplish blue. They were beautiful.

The trail branch we chose led us to the covered bridge on the eastern edge of the park.

We ate lunch at Under the Arch diner in Marshall. Typical Hoosier fare of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, chicken and noodles, fruit cobbler on the buffet. At Turkey Run we had seen a poster for a concert of Faure’s Requiem plus some Bach and John Rutter pieces by the Crawfordsville Community Chorus at Wabash college about 20 minutes away. The rather small group did a good job with the music. Since the rain lasted all day, it was nice to have some diversions. Back at the lodge, we played Upwards and read our books in the large gathering room. We went to a pizza place in Rockville for our evening meal. With the rain, those using Turkey Run were sparse compared to the crowds of Saturday. We did have wifi to check our email. We saw a “pleated” woodpecker, too. The autocorrect insisted on fixing pileated to pleated in my husband’s email.

Monday we ate breakfast in Rockville, then headed south to see more covered bridges. With the steady rain, we headed for home after just a few stops, arriving in Winona Lake around 2 p.m.