For many people, their Nebraska experience has been only traveling through along Interstate 80. Still beautiful land, but these flat long stretches only tell part of the story of Nebraska’s landscape. Only in going around to many regions does one truly understand what makes up Nebraska’s landscape. One such place of rarely seen beauty is Toadstool Geologic Park.
Some of have compared this destination as to what it might be like to be on the moon. With better air quality of course. 🙂
Hiking about is fairly easy on their well marked trails. If you are in good physical shape or are a climber, you could even forge your own path.
A dry creek bed is another good place to wander and experience the park. Evidently if it rains, you need to abandon that path fairly quickly. The water could move you along faster than you intended on traveling.
One other fun place to explore is the sodhouse that was moved on to the property.
This gave me an idea as to what being an early Nebraska settler possibly would have been like. During the summer, hot and blistering would have been the feel. During the winter, you would have been stuck. In fact, even today, this part of Nebraska basically shuts down as roads can quickly become impassable. You were truly hardy to live in this country.
Diagrams help to visualize the effort needed to construct this house.
The interior was surprisingly sunny. Obviously you also would have had great views of this interesting landscape.
Exploring this region is something I hope we can do again when our kids are a bit older. This time two of them stayed in the car with other family members and did not really even get to explore. Partially due to the heated temperatures that day, but the distance between two points is a bit longer than it seems like it should be as well. You do want to bring with water and sunscreen! To camp overnight, the cost is only $5, and the day usage fee is $3. Well worth it for the adventures that can entail!
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