Ledges State Park, IA / High Trestle Trail / Racoon River Valley Trail (4/4 -4/18/23)

Now we are back in the woods where we recently lived for 15+ years. We stayed at Ledges State Park to visit some of our favorite bike trails nearby. Ledges is not a real large park, but it is home of some great hiking trails through the sandstone canyon feeding the Des Moines river.

The High Trestle Trail has one of the best features I have seen on a bike rail trail. The High Trestle Bridge is both spectacular at night as in daylight.

The bridge is 13 stories high and a 1/2 mile long crossing the Des Moines river below. The 10' wide trail is all paved concrete and in great condition from start to finish.

Although not a Hall of Fame Rail Trail yet, this trail checks all the boxes to become one soon I hope. The trail is 25 miles long and connects five towns together with many restaurants/bars/patios on the trail.

My favorite part of the trail is from Woodward to Slater, but in Ankeny there are a bunch of places to eat/drink right at the end of the trail as well. My favorite places are the Flat Tire in Madrid and Nighthawk in Slater. Both have large patios right off the trail.

Another favorite rail trail of mine is the Hall of Fame, Raccoon River Valley Trail. One of the features of this trail is that it has a 71 mile loop that makes for a nice challenge. The whole trail is 89 miles and will soon be joined with the High Trestle Trail when the Connector is completed between Perry and Woodward. That will then create an all bike trail (no roads), 118 mile loop to include parts of Des Moines trails.

This trail is also very rural, so fields of corn, soybeans and hay are very common. This is near the town of Redfield on the southwest side.

The trail is made of both paved asphalt and concrete. The trail also has put in place paved crossings where the trail crosses gravel roads in many places.

One of my favorite places to stop on the trail is the Nineteen14 Depot in Minburn that also has a nice patio right off the trail. They also play live music quite often.

The trail connects 15 towns spaced about every 6 miles where most have public bathrooms/water and various restaurants/bars. Every June the day before Father's Day, the trail is utilized to host the Bacoon Ride with a few thousand friends to ride the 71 mile loop with bands, beer, and bacon-themed snacks at every stop. This ride is run by the same organization that hosts the RAGBRAI event every July which I will be posting in detail over the next few months.

The state park we stayed was recently renovated and our site was a nice pull-through with full hookups and plenty of room for our rig. This was a warm day.

Ooops, maybe we chose to come to Iowa too soon in the spring! In Iowa you never know what you'll get in April. Hopefully a warm spring gets here before we move even further north.