Hikes,  Indiana,  Off Road Trips,  Trips

The Mighty Merc – 9th Off Road Trip At The Badlands 4/6/19 – Part 1

Sitting pretty doing some back roads exploration.

We’ve been a bit overdue for a weekend trip, so when the option for a trip out to the Badlands came up, the opportunity was seized to make a long weekend out of it. Coming off the high from finally get lots of things sorted on the Merc, we were ready to start putting some miles on it to find out what the next round of maintenance needed to be. I can safely say this is the nicest the truck has driven in a long time, so the work is paying off!

We hit the road early, and pointed the truck east towards Indiana, plowing through the rains and hoping for dryer weather:

The weather eventually broke for us as we crossed the Indiana border and we started knocking the sights we wanted to see off our list. There will be another post showing all the bridges and mills we stopped at, so I’ll be a bit brief here. Though I must say that the truck looked pretty photogenic sitting in front of old bridges!

While we were stopping at some of these places, it was fun to recreate (almost) a couple of photos of the area from our prior visits. Like this spot where we stopped in the Mustang:

Sara L.: 2002 Mustang GT &emdash;
2012
Sara L.: 9th ORT 4-6-19 Badlands Offroad &emdash;
2019

And a place or two that we stopped with The Lone Ranger:

Sara L.: 14th Off-Road Trip Badlands 2-23-13 &emdash;
2013
Sara L.: 9th ORT 4-6-19 Badlands Offroad &emdash;
2019

The area is just a pretty as I remembered it. Pressing on from the bridges, we made a lunch stop, then checked into our Motel in hopes that the kids might take a little nap. After a massive nap failure, we trucked over to Turkey Run State Park where we snuck in an evening hike and dinner at the Inn.

We covered a touch over two miles with the kids, and they did a very good job at hiking, though there was some sadness involved when the boy managed to fall into the creek.

Two miles worth of hiking takes a bit with little legs!
Getting ready to cross the bridge
Taking a breather
Too Many Stairs for Little Legs!
Running for their dinner

On to Day 2

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