It’s clear that Iowans, as proud Midwesterners, are starting to wake up to the fact that there is something strange in the water, both physically and metaphorically. I was recently having a conversation with a friend via text, someone who I would call an average Iowan, someone who camps at Ledges State Park and rides a bike on the High Trestle Trail.
The Driftless Area is one of the very few unspoiled places to explore in the upper Midwest. The rolling plains run into the wide open valleys and drainages that surround the Mississippi. The landscape is speckled with beautiful oak forests and dotted with trout streams; small quant towns are hidden down inside the recesses of these deep valleys.
It’s almost like the Driftless has been able to escape the hands of time, it’s the perfect place to escape for the weekend, to forget the worries of the hustle and bustle of life. Sitting in a hot tent next to a warm fire with coyotes howling out their songs in the cold winter night, you get the same feeling those French trappers and traders had when a few hundered years ago the paddled down that big river and first laid eyes on those giant wooded hills.
You could say there forever. I almost did.
I love the outdoors in our hidden gem, the Upper Midwest; it’s a one-of-a-kind place. Sure, we trick all those unsuspecting victims driving through on I-80 into thinking that Iowa is just a series of undulating and rolling corn fields that go on forever. But that’s ok; it keeps our beautiful state uncrowded and the perfect place to raise a family and enjoy life.
I mean, whatever you do, don’t tell them visitors that places like this exist if they bothered to take a peak just a little ways off the beaten path.
Our beautiful Iowa has plenty of outdoor recreation and public land to satisfy the wander lust of the most adventurous among us. I should know, I’ve spent a lifetime here doing exactly that. Sure, I visit the popular spots that everyone else does, places like Pikes Peak, Yellow Banks, Backbone, Jester Park, and everything in between.
But, I also do much more that that. Most people are unaware, or maybe aware but not interested enough to know that Iowa boasts a massive list of Public Lands that Wildlife Management Areas that could keep you busy and intrigued the rest of your life.
Hiking, hunting, exploring, fishing, wildlife viewing all wait at your finger tips, in the very county you live in no doubt. But, there is something rotting at the core, something that probably explains why many of these Public Lands go unused and untouched, a waste.
I’ve written before about how …
and the problem is only getting worse, not better.
The more I spent time on our Public Lands, walking and exploring that meandering Des Moines River and other forgotten haunts, the more I see why Iowa Public Lands are an embarrassment to us natives. You can literally see the degradation happening before your eyes, it’s impossible to miss.
Case and point.
I spend much of the summer walking or paddling the Des Moines River and surrounding water ways, simply fishing or enjoying the plethora of bald eagles that patrol our blue skies. I spend days with my children biking the myriad of trail systems that dot our central plains.
You know what never changes and get’s worse every year? Disrepair and trash. Piles of trash, mounds of trash, incredible amount of trash.
This picture was taken only a few days ago.
This picture was taken a few days before that, heading out into the woods to enjoy some nature along the river.
Maddening is it not? It’s been like this for years.
You know what else is maddening? This year when taking my children fishing to Big Creek State Park, where …
… and, where I observed the DNR personal driving around in a BRAND NEW massive white Ram Heavy Duty 3500 dually pickup truck. This is a $100,000 dollar machine.
Yes, instead of fixing the playground for the children, picking up trash, fixing some of the bathrooms, no, what I get when I go fishing with my children is a dilapidated and broken bathroom that is closed, piles of trash everywhere, and a DNR who want’s to check my fishing license while I stand next to piles of used trash.
It’s the same everywhere I go. Angry Conservation and DNR employees who are jaded so badly that they have stopped caring decades ago. They don’t bother even trying. It’s pathetic, and it shows.
I’m a realist, and I happen to have grown up in era where we were taught that people are capable of amazing things, especially those who believe in something … nothing can stop them.
Each and every DNR and Conservation worker can either decide to make it their mission to make their park(s) beautiful and assessable to the public, somewhere they would be proud to take their own family … or not.
It’s pretty clear what choice they have made. I’m not interested in some opinion of an “armchair” reader of Iowa Outdoors or Our Iowa who’s never actually gotten off their couch, left Des Moines, and actually went and put their feet in the water or boots in the mud of the trails. It’s bad. It’s getting worse.
People complain about “not enough funding,” that everyone and all those billion of agriculture dollars are against us and our Public Lands. Well, that sounds like a nice sound byte, but this problem is a clear and obvious lack of caring about our public lands by those charged with keep things lands for our public good. This is decades in the making.
They have enough money to buy new trucks, but they can’t be bother about piles of trash? Shame on them.
It’s that time of year again, the Christmas and Holiday season is already upon us, 2024 went flying by! If you’re like me, you might be looking for something new, something different for the outdoor adventure lover in your life, better to order early than wait till it’s too late.
This story starts with a 43-year-old man, one could call him an experienced Adventurer and someone who was well-traveled and used to remote wild places. He was on an epic travel adventure by all accounts, had just visited the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota, hit the Badlands, and was in the process of exploring the Grand Teton National Park … nothing too crazy for this adventurer who had spent time in Russia and even attended school in Germany.
Who would have guessed it? I mean, in today’s world, is it all that surprising? Not really. Yellowstone blew up. Of course it did. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, a rock … hmmm … it’s making the rounds of the interwebs that on July 23, 2024, a significant hydrothermal explosion occurred at Black Diamond Pool in Biscuit Basin, Yellowstone National Park.
The things that can happen to outdoor adventures never cease to amaze me. Years go by, books get written, stories get made into movies, and we all know better … yet it happens again and again, like clockwork.
I was recently in the far quiet north contemplating life on the shore of Lake Superior, of course, I had a book in my hands while I listened to the crashing of the waves. A wilderness survival book nonetheless. In fact this book was about some real-life survival stories, one of which happened a mear ~50 miles or so from where I was comfortably reclining on a sofa with a hot cup of tea and my book watching the sun go down over that Big Lake.
And then, much to my surprise, as I scrolled through my phone … I saw a story pop up of basically that exact same thing happening to someone many thousands of miles away in Colorado. It was just too good to be true. Two stories, thousands of miles apart, a decade has passed … yet the same thing was still happening.
In case you haven’t been following the outdoor news, all you bush crafters, survivalists, and outdoor adventure enthusiasts have just been schooled by a 34-year-old hiker who became lost in the mountains of northern California … for 10 days … without food or water when he disappeared!
I keep wondering if we will see an Arc floating by. It seems we are always fighting one thing or another. One year it’s dry and forest fires blow smoke to our southern neighbors, or like this year it’s biblical floods.
In another unsurprising move for the state of Iowa in regards to our limited and already shakey natural resources, yet another pride and joy has slipped into a putrid state of disrepair and neglect. As if the degradation of our soil and water to a ridiculous state isn’t enough, we have to add this to the list as well.