The best for last – Gems of Indiana

Last weekend I went with a group of friends to one of the more spectacular sites of Indiana – and with that I mean not only spectacular by Indiana standards.

The plan was to do some ‘hiking’ (for Australian readers: there is not really any ‘bush’ here to walk in) in Shades State park approximately one hour drive from Lafayette. The park is really nice and when you enter it through the rather grand looking brick wall portal, you receive a map of the track system. This track system looks impressive by any standards – that is unless you consider the scale of the map. At that point, however, you are lucky because American national part maps apparently never show a scale. So you drive to the designated car park get out of the car and eagerly start on the first track. Only then you discover that the term ‘hike’ is a ridiculous exaggeration – not even stroll would be appropriate. To aptly name what we did, the term amble comes to my mind…

None the less the scenery is fairly impressive. Also, the beauty of the sandstone cliffs and gorges is possibly amplified by the stark contrast to the endless stretches of perfectly flat corn fields we had passed on our way here.


Comfortable stairs are another feature of American hiking.


A very funky feature - a rare convex waterfall




After half an hour we arrived back at the car park and that would have been the plan for the day. The rest of the ‘hikers’ in the park were lying on the spacious lawns and had apparently already turned in for the day – that is if they had actually done any walking for we never saw anyone along the tracks.

Here is some interesting piece of statistics for you: A study out of Berkeley found that the average distance an American walks per week is 1.4 miles – this is about 2.3 kilometres. And that includes all possible walking activity, like going to the fridge to get another beer. It is no rocket science to work out that this figure breaks down to a distance of 330 meters walked by the average American per day – I think it would actually be possible to rack up that distance by going to get beer from the fridge alone. So the Americans we saw that day were pretty active people – in fact, that day they statistically did the walking share for a number of their fellow citizens (who presumably have a beer fridge right next to the couch….)

In our group, however, it was fairly easy to get people exited for another walk. We decided to check out a walk in the nearby Pine Hill Reserve. And here is the thing – we did not even drive to the next parking lot, but took a walking track of about ten minutes there, did the round track and walked back.







So after a good day of walking we drove home, sat on a sunny porch and went to get a couple of beers from the fridge….