Best For:
Hikers who like rugged terrain, people who would rather explore many trails than just the land they know, road-trippers building an adventure-log around a destination, and anyone who considers a little questionable weather part of the story.
The Essence:
Read Time: ⏰ 8–10 minutes | Weight: 🥾 Rugged & adventurous | Mood: ⛈️ Chaotic, curious & exhilarated
Trail Log:
- Our Trek: 3.29 miles in 1 hour and 39 minutes
- The Views Before Trekking
- Turkey Run’s Parking, Fees, & Facilities
- Climbing & Crab-Walking
- A tornado warning arriving at the worst possible time
Sometimes the Adventures Start Before the Trek:
The trip through Indiana and Illinois started handing us views before we even hit our first trailhead. Driving down the highway we saw many fields of farm land and blue skies that held alien-like cloud formations which seemed to line the road.
Driving here I noticed that the lack of foothills and mountains was almost anxiety inducing. It’s a large contrast to what I’m used to from growing up in the Appalachian region where the hills frame everything I typically take in.
Taelor and I were about 14 miles from the trailhead when we saw a crop circle. Except this wasn’t a crop circle in the traditional mysterious sense. It was a smiley face.
We were on our way to spend two days chasing trails across state lines, and apparently Indiana wanted to greet us with a giant agricultural emoji. We reached Turkey Run at around 5 PM and the actual adventure could finally begin.
Turkey Run State Park:
Turkey Run State Park sits near Marshall, Indiana, along Sugar Creek. This is not your average hike nor is it the type of park where hiking means always following a dirt path through the woods.
The park is known for:
- deep sandstone ravines
- steep canyon walls
- creek beds
- Wooden ladders
- suspension bridge
- rugged trails
The Indiana DNR currently describes Trail 3 as very rugged, with the route running through the steep walls of Rocky and Bear hollows. They warn that some portions can become impassable during high water.
Which, in hindsight, this made our timing not great.
There was weather coming even though I had checked the radar in the days and weeks approaching our trip and it always read clear skies.
Entry Fee:
It was $15 per car to enter Turkey Run State Park as out-of-state visitors.
We also got a physical map for an additional $1. Why not support the park and have something to take home? Considering we were about to head into a maze of sandstone ravines, even though I had downloaded an offline digital map, a physical map would provide us with an extra layer of safety.
Parking:
I know I can’t be alone with the confusion parking lots provide. We ended up parking more than a quarter mile from the trailhead. I kept getting turned around and needed to find a restroom soon. So we parked at the office.
As my luck would have it the office where we parked was, of course, closed.
The Facilities:
Tae and I opted to just walk to the restroom building positioned by the trailhead that we planned to utilize. Turkey Run State Park has a few facilities positioned near different trail heads, picnic areas, sports fields, and other park amenities.
The park also offers a pool, multiple trails, tennis courts, basketball courts, picnic areas, and ball fields.
I had one of the stickers I bought from titty graveyard on Etsy with me. They have a trans flag with a white snail depicted on them and, they say, “A trans person peed here and no one noticed.” What better to do than stick one inside the restroom.
Gear I Packed for Turkey Run State Park:
I never walk into a trek completely unprepared. That is irresponsible and does not set you up for a good trip. I knew the trek would be up to roughly 2 miles if not longer. In preparation for this I brought:
- A gallon of water
- Trekking poles
- Four protein bars, fruit snacks, & trail mix
- Hiking shoes
- A general first-aid kit
- An offline map & the paper park map
- 2 headlamps
- 2 power banks
- Extra chargers
- Layered clothing
- A reusable poncho
Most of the things I packed fit into my mom’s old fanny-pack which I used on this trek. The things that did not fit inside the fanny-pack attached to the waist strap nicely for hands-free carrying.
Our Plan for Turkey Run State Park:
The plan was to do at least 2 miles over the loop for trails 3 & 10. We weren’t interested in doing the easy parts. We came with the intention to see the Punch Bowl, Bear Hollow, the Ice Box, and the infamous wooden ladders. These were the major features along the route we planned to take.
Turkey Run State Park’s terrain is not just scenery surrounding a trail. The terrain literally is the trail. In many places you’ll find yourself wondering where the trail went just to realize you never left it after you push forward.
The IDNR notes that a lot of the park’s trails include portions that use ravine streambeds as trail surfaces. This means the ground can become slick and uneven, and high water can make sections impassable.
Turkey Run State Park’s Ravines:
Standing inside Turkey Run State Park’s ravines, it is easy to look at the sandstone walls and feel small. Surrounded by large cliffs while walking in the gorge you trace the path of the water that’s been eroding rock here for centuries.
The exposed bedrock here is Mansfield sandstone, which formed from sediments deposited hundreds of millions of years ago. IDNR’s interpretive material describes sandstone deposits dating to the Pennsylvanian Period, when large rivers carried sediment into an inland sea. Over enormous spans of time, that sand was compacted and cemented into sandstone.
Then the glaciers came. Glacial meltwater helped carve the existing sandstone into the deep ravines and formations that make Turkey Run State Park such a different hiking environment.
When you’re scrambling over the rocks, walking through the ravines or climbing beside those enormous sandstone walls, you’re walking among the leftovers of several completely different geological worlds.
The kind of terrain where you can’t just put your head down and walk for five miles because the trail itself keeps demanding your attention.
The Suspension Bridge & Weather Warning:
After leaving the restroom we started past the trailhead and down the dirt trail to a gravel lot where an IDNR officer sat in his patrol vehicle. Directly behind him was Rocky Hollow Suspension Bridge.
The officer stopped us and asked if we had “missed the alert for the thunderstorm.” In return, I asked him if he was referring to the “few claps of thunder we had heard recently.” We went back and forth with him a few times but, eventually, we came to the conclusion that we were allowed to hike still just at our own risk.
We were also already there, so of course we kept pushing. This is probably the point in the story where a reasonable person expects me to say that I was just messing around and of course we immediately turned around.
We did not… a little potential rain and thunder never stopped me before. After all there are a lot of cliffs we could take cover under, right?
The weather still hadn’t even arrived, it was still a hypothetical.
The Punch Bowl & The Wedge:
We made our way through the Wedge and the Punch Bowl, and we didn’t approach them delicately.
We climbed. We scrambled.
We crab walked? One of us almost did a split? We went sliding through mud and across sandstone, while we trekked all around trails 3 and 10.
You could even say that we went through the whole thing like a couple of spider monkeys. Yet somehow there was still no rain.
The Punch Bowl which is one of Turkey Run State Park’s more interesting geological features is a pothole under a small waterfall. This pothole formed when a glacial erratic became trapped in moving water and repeatedly swirled against the sandstone, gradually grinding out the depression we see today.
The Wedge has a different geological origin. Indiana’s geological interpretation of the park describes it as a block separated from the canyon wall along a fracture, or joint, in the sandstone.
At one point we even had to hike up the front of a waterfall.
The Wooden Ladders:
A while back I saw a video of hikers at Turkey Run State Park descending down these large wooden ladders into ravines below, it was in that moment I knew I too wanted to climb down them.
Turkey Run’s Trail 3 is officially classified as very rugged and is specifically known for these ladders, passing between the steep walls of Rocky and Bear hollows.
Though we had yet to be greeted by the storm, the thunder grew louder and was why we kept pushing faster down the trail.
The entire way Taelor and I made jokes about how a little thunder couldn’t deter us. Right before we approached the ladders I told Tae “I bet the downpour starts when we are on the ladders.”
I started down the ladder, the clouds opened up and drenched me with rain, and both our phones started sending out the screaming weather alert tones at the same damn time.
“TAKE SHELTER NOW.
IMMINENT THREAT. TORNADO.”
That got our attention. Suddenly, the fact that we had been joking about the weather became considerably less funny.
We spent the entire hike watching the sky threaten us, and mocking the thunder.
The sky finally decided it had waited long enough. Two hikers suddenly decided the best possible hiking speed was get-the-fuck-out-of-here speed.
Turkey Run State Park Taught Us:
Every hike is different.
Some hikes are about distance others focus on elevation. On some hikes you find waterfalls and cool stones. Turkey Run State Park was about the terrain itself.
This was the kind of place where the landscape changed underneath our feet, where a trail could turn into a sandstone ravine, a ladder, a waterfall crossing or a scramble without much warning.
Maybe that’s why it had been sitting on my list and at the forefront of my mind. I don’t just want trails that take me somewhere. I want trails that make me remember how I got there.
Turkey Run State Park definitely did that… even though we did the trail at super speed.
Plan Your Trek:
Turkey Run State Park. Rock Hollow Preserve, Indiana. AllTrails.
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