“This place is beautiful,” marveled our 4-year-old, Nathaniel, as he gazed around. The brief morning rains had given way to a blue, puffy-cloud sky, and a cool breeze whistled through the woods. Manchester, the county seat of Delaware County, is nearby and has plenty of supplies, restaurants and other amenities.Īfter white-knuckling our young boys through that panoramic gauntlet, the path smoothed out again, leading us into a forest in which mostly oak and maple trees reached up like spires wrestling for space in nature’s cathedral. There is a lodge, gift shop and concession stand at Backbone Lake, at the southern entrance to the park. Useful Information– Backbone’s dolomite limestone is popular with climbers and rappellers. In other words, be careful and keep a firm grip on your children, because there are no barriers to catch you from an inadvertent tumble. We were dead on the spine of the “Devil’s Backbone,” and it’s easy to see why this spot is so named, for the view is equal parts exhilarating and frightening: one misstep and you have an express ticket to the undertaker. The setting became more dramatic when we approached the trail’s edge, just several paces away from the middle: On either side, the path dropped at least 80 feet, straight down the bedrock face to the brown ribbon of the Maquoketa River on one side and a section of Backbone Lake on the other. Just ahead, the central part of the trail seemed to disappear into a narrow-walled gully. Cedar trees jutted from the top of the rocky formation. Within minutes, the trail had turned from soft dirt to blocky patches of granite, which jutted up from the ground in irregular shapes and incongruent angles, challenging our every step. There are several trails there we decided to take the Backbone Trail, a two-mile loop recommended by a colleague who goes with her family to the park every summer. It showed that most of the hiking trails branch out from the east entrance, and so that’s where we went. There, a kindly ranger noticed me walking around aimlessly and gave me a map of the park. We first went to Backbone’s south entrance, which we found is more for picnickers content with watching children splash in the manmade Backbone Lake. The drive in itself is scenic, showcasing Iowa in its resident, rural profile: shades of green curving toward the horizon, sky speckled with rain-ripened clouds of gray as the one-lane highway curved through and around towns named Central City, Ryan, Coggon and Dundee. On a preternaturally cool July morning, my family and I hit the road for Backbone State Park, about an hour’s drive from our home in Mount Vernon and some 90 minutes’ travel north from Iowa City. Indeed, the beauty of Iowa lies both in its minimalist, contrasting tableau of earth and sky and in less known attractions, some of which you’ll find in state parks that are an easy day trip from Iowa City and the University of Iowa campus. Of course, there is corn in Iowa-lots of it-but there are oases of beauty: vertigo-inducing bluffs and cliffs carved by the eons-long meandering of rivers across the prairie undulating hills lapping toward the horizon like gentle waves of green rich, dense forests of quiet and solitude to rival stands of hardwoods elsewhere. They, like many across our great land, have little concept of Iowa, save for anecdotal images of a vast, flat expanse dominated by fields of corn (and one iconic ball field, too) located somewhere in the middle of the country. “Where? Idaho?” they replied more often than not. “Why are you moving to Ohio?” they’d ask. Last year, as I told my Rhode Island friends that my family and I were leaving the Ocean State for Iowa, many got a puzzled look.
Prophetstown state park to backbone state park iowa series#
Other stories in the series can be found here.
So University Communication and Marketing is publishing a series of “daytripper” stories this summer, pointing to fun, interesting, and uniquely Midwestern destinations within a day’s drive of Iowa City. But sometimes faculty, staff, and students want to explore areas beyond campus.
Editor’s note: The University of Iowa offers lots to do throughout the year, from arts performances to readings, and lectures to recreation.
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