I met sarahgirl and pizza at Yellow River State Forest Friday afternoon. We parked at the headquarters parking lot and hiked to Camp John Schultz. The original plan was to hike to Camp Glen Wendel, but we figured if anyone(Hangin'Yankee) arrived late they would be able to follow our tracks in the snow as the trails hadn't been used in a while. Unfortunately, I later found out that HY arrived at 8 p.m. and took a shortcut to Glen Wendel, completely missing our trail, and decided to camp there. Sorry Hangin'Yankee! Next time we'll stick to the plan.

pizza

sarahgirl






Directly across from camp was a big grove of pine trees and we all just naturally headed in there to make camp. There were plenty of trees and it was a natural wind block. It was snowing lightly and the temp was in the low 30's. The remainder of the evening was spent gathering downed wood and chatting around the campfire. The low for the night was 20 with occasional gusty winds.

JerryW's camp


pizza's camp


saragirl's camp




Saturday morning, after breakfast in the hammocks and packing up, we hiked back to the cars for water and then visited the fire tower. It's the only fire tower left standing in Iowa. Too bad it was fenced off and we couldn't climb it!







It was here that I said my goodbyes as I'd had enough cold and snow. sarahgirl and pizza hiked on into the park to find a campsite for the night and I headed down the fire road towards the cars. On the way I passed the Iowa DNR's sawmill.





On my drive home I was treated to many bald eagle sitings. In one corn field there were so many eagles that I stopped counting at 30!



I look forward to returning to Yellow River State Forest when the weather is more favorable(to me!). It's a very nice park and camping in the back country sites is free.