Northeast Iowa Getaway

Gene and I went on a lil trip last week to do some hiking and biking in northeast Iowa along the Mississippi River. There are lots of beautiful state parks in this area.
We had picnic lunches at noon.

 

 Give Gene some kettle chips, summer sausage, cheddar cheese, and Mt. Dew and he's a happy man :)

We hiked in Pikes Peak State Park. It has miles and miles of beautiful hiking trails. The trails are well groomed and some have lots of steps.

The trusty old iphone even had reception in remote areas- better than my silly AT&T piece of crap.

 Many of the trails had overlooks with awesome views of the Mississippi River.

The second night we stayed in Marquette, IA. I like to stick to chain hotels, pretty safe pick usually. On the other hand Gene isn't scared of the little poe-dunk places. This was his pick- it turned out to be "not so bad".

The next day we checked out Yellow River State Forest. It was a very remote place.
My "climb like a monkey" husband was very disappointed that he couldn't climb this fire tower. It was gated with No Trespassing signs.

We did some biking here too, until the trail crossed a creek- it didn't look too deep. Gene tried it but it turned out to be deeper than he thought. It was kinda rainy too so we turned around and headed for the vehicle.

 Our next stop was Effigy Mounds. This area also has a lot of nice hiking trails.

 I didn't take my camera along on Saturday morning but Decorah has a great bike trail! We went for a nice little bike ride before heading home.
And we came home to "Housy Bare Buns"- hilarious, hee hee! After his bath he was runnning around the house and this is how we found him a couple minutes later. He has this thing for putting on everybody's shoes. Now that I look at the pictures it really reminds me of Dana. She was always undressing and dressing when she was a toddler!

Mom Hoog