Mormon Island State Recreation Area in Nebraska

Recently we visited our first Nebraska Great Park Pursuit location for 2016. Because we were driving down Interstate 80 ultimately on our way to Kearney, stopping off at Mormon Island State Recreation area worked great. Since this state park can be seen from the interstate, it makes the perfect location for a pit stop as well as a picturesque place to take a hike. According to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, nineteen surface acres of water are just waiting to be explored.

As one of our purposes in stopping was to find the post rubbing, we clicked on the NGPP link to find the details about the rubbing location. This is the clue we were given.

Clue: At the east end of the park a nature trail begins near a small pond.

My daughter joined me on the my mission to find the location. I must confess that we did a bit of wandering. Perhaps we should have read further or used the GPS coordinates.

Distance: 1,291 Feet from swimming beach parking lot Surface: Grass, Dirt GPS: N40 49’ 37.3944” ; W098 21’ 58.2048”

Finally we found some guys that were taking care of the grounds, and they informed us that we needed to go a bit further on our hike. Sure enough, we found the spot. You can print all of the locations before you visit them, but I have found that participating is easier for me if I just a notebook. You will need a pencil or crayon to be able to complete the rubbing.

Mormon Island SRA is a beautiful park. Although swimming is not permissible in every spot, plenty of places to hike are contained in the SRA. We were needing to get on to our final destination, but hopefully we will make it back to explore more of this park someday.

http://outdoornebraska.gov/mormonisland/