Indian Cave State Park

[TripLeader]

I spent a couple of nights with Ex-Coloradan at Indian Cave State Park in Nebraska this weekend. The Nebraska Games and Park Commission calls the park "Nebraska's Best Kept Secret." We enjoyed the visit, and I would like to go back in the future.
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It was about 35 degrees F when we arrived on Thursday afternoon. That was the highest temperature all weekend. Here was the temp on Friday afternoon, according to my truck's dashboard. There was scattered sunshine and calm winds, so it was bearable.

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We got our camp set up. We had plenty of room for gear with just the two of us. We stayed at site 18 in the Hackberry Hollow Campground. The camp had a spacious restroom with showers. It was a nice feature; The cleanliness and condition was what you would expect for a public restroom. It also had a payphone and pop machine. There was a laundry room attached to it that was closed for the season.

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We hung out at camp and cooked dinner our first night there. The next day we started off our explorations with a visit to the cave.

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The viewing platform was built in 1997.

 

[TripLeader]

The cave is more like a natural amphitheater.


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The petroglyphs there are believed to be about 1800 years old.

 

[TripLeader]

Another petroglyph.

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Unfortunately, the cave has a lot of carvings made by visitors in the last 150 years. There was a rumor that Lewis and Clark visited the cave as they traveled up the Missouri River in 1804. Today, the Missouri is about 250 yards away from the cave. Two hundred years ago, the river was projected to be possibly over one mile away, so a visit from the explorers was not likely. However, Lewis and Clark did note stopping at a trading post in the area.
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Another view of the cave and boardwalk.

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We were the only ones there during our visit. The park was pretty slow that weekend. There were about 5 or 6 other parties at the campsite. Most of them appeared to be hunters, as deer season was open for archery in the park.

 

[TripLeader]

From there we stopped to check out the range in the park.

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There was evidence of black powder rifles.

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We also walked around the St. Deroin Cemetery.

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There were a lot of graves of children from the late 1800s. A park brochure described that there had been a cholera epidemic around that time.

 

[TripLeader]

The next stop was St. Deroin.

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The old cabin and buildings are used to recreate skills from past times for park visitors.




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There must have been some Halloween festivities. The park had several places with decorations and things still present.

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A better view of the traps on the cabin.

 

[TripLeader]

The town had a school, that was used until the early 1940s.

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Looking in through a window.

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Looking in through another window. That's a 48 star flag in the frame.

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There was an old store.

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Looking inside.

 

[TripLeader]

The one-way loop around the History Trail, which took us to St. Deroin, was pretty interesting.

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We finally got off the road and did some hiking. Going southeast from trailhead 3.

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We came across what looked to be left from a fresh kill. Maybe an owl, or another predatory bird, ate a bird lower on the food chain.

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More signs of wildlife.

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Continuing down the trail.

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The park has Adirondack shelters in place along the trails for backpacker use. There's about 22 miles of hiking trails. This shelter was in group of three of them.
They were on nice overlook of the Missouri River.

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We took another trail down to the river.

 

[TripLeader]

The next trail we took was to get to the Halfbreed Cemetery. There was only one marked grave there.

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We came back out to the road at trailhead 2.

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There was a well-built viewing platform between trailheads 2 and 3.


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The view from the platform.

 

[TripLeader]

With the cold weather, snow came. We had two sources of heat.

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The other source was the Big Buddy heater.

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Our campsite in the snow.

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Our time in the park came to an end and we had to leave. I hope to get back there to hike more of it.

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For more information, the park's website is here: http://outdoornebraska.ne.gov/parks/guides/parksearch/showpark.asp?Area_No=91#accomo
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The brochure, including a map, about the park and it's history is here: http://outdoornebraska.ne.gov/parks/guides/parksearch/pdfs/Brochure91.pdf

 

[roverrocks]

Very nice trip report. Great pictures. Thanks for posting.

 

[iowafj]

Great report. I went last summer the fourth of July weekend.

 

[TripLeader]

Very nice trip report. Great pictures. Thanks for posting.

Great report. I went last summer the fourth of July weekend.

Thanks for the kind responses.

 

[TripLeader]

The other thing I enjoyed about the park was the night sky. The stars were extremely bright, even at the campground, and you could see satellites in orbit. I tried some star photography while sitting by the campfire. The tree trunks were red from the campfire light. This was with a 60 second exposure.