Hunters waited at the Ryerson’s Woods trailhead in Iowa City on a beautiful late April Saturday morning. Older men with walking sticks wore blaze orange caps. University students in shorts and sneakers chatted among themselves. A handful of middle-aged women and a few retired folks rounded out the group. I joined them with my notebook […]
Hiking
Fossil Gorge, uncovered 30 years ago, preserves a 375 million-year-old ocean floor in eastern Iowa
Sixty-five million years? Please. You want to see something old, head to the Coralville Dam. It’s not the dam that’s old, though it has survived almost seven decades and two near-apocalyptic floods. In fact, it was the first of these floods in 1993 that breached the 712-foot spillway and inundated the campground below, washing away […]
Hiking Kent Park, home to prairies, ponds and picturesque views
F.W. Kent Park in Oxford is one of eastern Iowa’s most picturesque and diverse parks — 1,052 square acres of forest, lakes and prairie and an ideal spot for hiking, camping, picnicking, birdwatching and (in non-pandemic times) letting your kids loose on the park’s playground or at a youth summer camp. Kent Park’s most popular […]
Take a hike: UI grads to spend six months documenting the Appalachian Trail
Recent University of Iowa grads Elizabeth Furmanski and Collin Blunk are The Wild Outsiders, and they want you to come along, virtually at least, as they…

