Hiking Shades State Park In Indiana
Shades State Park in Indiana isn’t super well known, but it is an awesome place to get out and explore.
If you were able to check out our last adventure at Turkey Run State Park, this could be a sister park or a twin park depending how you want to look at it. Both parks are incredibly fun to go hiking at and both have unique landscapes involving a bunch of rock that has slowly been cut away over time. Both state parks also have the fun to paddle Sugar Creek running down the middle of them. 🙂
Shades State Park Trail Map -> Shades State Park Map
SO MANY LADDERS!
On this adventure through Shades State Park we decided to take trails 5 and 1 mainly due to the fact that with Blaze chillin at home, we could be a bit more adventurous on this particular trip. Although Blaze is quite adventurous himself, this ladder (shown above) would have been a show stopper for the poor guy haha.
Another thing to note, a lot of these trails at this state park are fairly short. This worked out perfectly for us though because we were heading to this park right after we got off work whilst staying at a RV park about a half hour away.
RUGGED BUT REWARDING HIKES
The first trail at Shades State Park with the ladder you just saw is on trail 5. Trail 5 and trail 4 are both fairly similar with ladders hiking down into some ravines and then the other half of the trail hiking along the ridge line between the ravines. Both are really fun and I have hiked both in the past. Just keep in mind you will be hiking down some creeks so bring the proper footwear depending if you want to be dry or wet. 🙂
HIKE ALONG SUGAR CREEK
You can also explore Sugar Creek while hiking down trail 5. I don’t think it is technically part of trail 5, but there is an obvious little cleared our jaunt when you get closer to the creek. Another note, be careful around this area as Sugar Creek is known to have floods around the area.
I’ve seen pictures of water brushing the bottom of the suspension bridge at Turkey Run State Park before so it is quite possible that this area could be closed off from time to time.
DEVIL’S PUNCH BOWL
After looping around trail 5 we decided to head towards the Devil’s Punch Bowl on trail 1. There are quite a few stairs around this area, so if you have any mobility issues this might not be the greatest trail to take.
Granted, I don’t know of any clean cut trail at Shades State Park that is easily hiked. I guess they say that trail 6 on the map is easy, but I’ll leave that to your own discretion as we did not take that particular trail.
CONTRAST BETWEEN ABOVE AND BELOW
The punch bowl is pretty epic itself. We got there at just the right time in the evening where the sun was just barely shining through the tree cover from above and spot lighting certain areas below. This made for some really fun photos and video footage as we admired the view. Crazy nature being all beautiful.
DON’T TAKE THAT SLIP n SLIDE!
After playing around in the creek we decided to push forward on trail 1 and head back towards Silver Cascade Falls! As you can see from the photos Deanna and I took, the falls are quite the epic area to go check out.
Kind of looks like a huge slip-n-slide but considering the stairs to get back up to the top are broken…I wouldn’t suggest it. Besides the fact you might slide down to your doom if you aren’t careful. 🙂
VISTA UPON VISTA
After we climbed up some stairs back to the top of trail 1, we took a stroll down the gravel road to a couple overlook points. The first point was called “Inspiration Point” and the other one was called “Prospect Point.”
Both we were beautiful views, but I really gotta hand it to Prospect Point (photos above). It is such a gorgeous view over sugar creek and the wooded area surrounding it.
We really enjoyed hiking around at Shades State Park and hope you enjoyed coming along with us for the journey! This was the last of the two hikes we were able to complete on this particular road trip, but we still have plenty more coming your way just waiting to be edited.
NOTE FROM THE WRITER
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Adventure On!
