Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Hiking the Loess Hills

We are enjoying our stay on the east side of the Missouri River here in Iowa. Even though we have spent most of our time across the river in Omaha, Nebraska, we are liking Iowa too. The nearest big town is Council Bluffs, and we went in search of the origin of that town's name. We found out it came from our friends Lewis and Clark and the Corp of Discovery. We followed their route all across the western United States last year, and we found they made stops here in Iowa. It seems that they had their first council with the neighborhood Indians here on the bluff over the river. So that's why it's called Council Bluffs! There's a memorial built on top of the bluff marking the spot.

From here we can look down off our perch on the bluff to see the Missouri River valley below. More water shows up in the picture because of the recent flooding along both sides of the river. This is the view that the Lewis and Clark council on the bluff saw here in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

We are high above the valley, on a loess cliff that this area is known for. We lived here for three days before we finally got to the Nature Center in our park to find out how to properly enunciate "loess." It is pronounced "luss" and rhymes with bus. It's a unique kind of loose rock found only two places in the world--here in the Missouri Valley and in China. It seemed easier to come here to see it for ourselves.

It also took us three days to find time to take some of the hiking trails near our motor home at Hitchcock Nature Center campground. We started early in the morning, hoping for the coolest weather possible. We found that even the coolest weather of these hot summer days makes for very sweaty hiking. But in spite of the heat, we were still enjoying our hike.

Add the Iowa humidity, and we were wringing wet with sweat. There were chances of scattered rain showers, and we were secretly hoping for the rain. We couldn't have gotten any wetter, and it might have cooled us off some. But in spite of the heat and humidity, we were still enjoying our hike.

There are twelve miles of trails in this park, all connected so that good length loop hikes are possible. We got into the strenuous part of the trail system, and found ourselves gasping to make it up steep grades, and struggling not to fall down steep grades down. That is Mark at the bottom of a very steep hill, not looking forward to another steep hike up behind him. But in spite of the heat, humidity, and steepness, we were still enjoying our hike.

Did we mention the mosquitoes? We covered ourselves with a liberal dose of bug spray, but they still plagued us. No matter how tired we were from all those inclines, we couldn't stop to rest because we would have been swarmed by mosquitoes. In fact, we got quite a good arm workout during this hike for all the swatting and flailing of arms we were doing to ward off the mosquitoes. The picture below might look like Denisa is waving at the camera; but in fact she is waving off the mosquitoes that have chased us all day. But in spite of the heat, humidity, steepness, and mosquitoes, we were still enjoying our hike.

We are experienced hikers, and we applied bug spray before we started this morning. We brought the spray with us, and reapplied more liberally when we saw how bad they were. Those darn mosquitoes meant that we didn't have time to stop and smell the flowers. Denisa literally gave a blood donation to take a picture of these lovely wild lilies along the trail.

Likewise, she normally would have stopped to pick a pint of these wild blackberries. But this was the entire harvest since she was being bug-bombed.

We were glad to get to the long board walk section of the hike. Being removed from the grass and mud, also seemed to remove us from some of the mosquitoes.

We loved the views when we hiked out to Fox Ridge Point. With the abundant rain this year, there is so much green that it almost hurts our eyes!

As we explore this western edge of Iowa, we are falling in love with the fields of corn that surround us. On Sunday, we went to a little church down a dirt road. After a nice service, we took the long road home through the country, just to enjoy the fields of corn and beans one more time. It really does feel like we have wandered into another of God's wonders! We think this is a beautiful view!

One of the men at church told us that corn should be "knee high on the Fourth of July." It looks like this crop is way ahead of its time, and we're looking forward to eating sweet corn here in Iowa very soon!

After a great three days camping at Hitchcock Nature Center, it's time to head on down the road to see more wonders!