We live very near a state park called Caeser’s creek. We frequent this area for a lot of our hiking, and one day when we were hiking the perimeter trail caught my eye. According to the park signage, it is a 12.2 mile loop and I knew that would be out of our range with kids, but I kept it in the back of my mind for a date day!
That day finally arrived when we had Theo’s parents come and stay with the kids for a couple of days. We packed up a backpack with water and snacks, laced up our sneakers and hit the trails around 11:30am.
When I pulled the trail up on All Trails app, it said it was 15 miles long! We estimated that we could maybe do 3 miles an hour, so guessed we would finish around 6pm. Several reviews on the All Trails app helped us gauge how long it might take us, and it seemed the consensus for experienced hikers was between 4-5 hours.
We started out peppy and excited!
The trail is well marked and cleared and we never had any confusion on where we were going.
Pretty quickly into the hike, we started to struggle with all the MUD. It wasn’t just “oh gross” muddy…it was “this is completely impassable unless we detour and tromp through the forest” muddy.
At one point Theo took off his shoes and just sloshed through the mud. We were picking our way over logs and rocks or hopping through on the parts that looked least muddy. We pretty quickly realized that if the whole trail was this muddy, it was going to take us a lot longer than we expected!
Ah, finally! Solid ground!
At mile 1, I slipped in the mud and fell hard. My arms went out behind me to brace my fall and I heard a snap as soon as I hit the ground- pain was shooting through my elbow. I pretty much knew it was broken, but decided that my best strategy would be ignoring it and trying to walk it off…so continue to walk we did.
We stopped once every hour for a snack/drink break, which means that we stopped a total of 3 times (we opted to not stop at hour 4, since we were so close to being done!)
We packed lots of healthy/protein snacks, but apparently I only took pictures of the unhealthy stuff hahaha.
The day we decided to hike was BEAUTIFUL. Like, it could not have been a more beautiful day. The sun was shining, it was in the high 70s, and there was a brisk breeze the whole time. I think we saw a total of 6 people during the whole 12 miles, so it felt like we were just in our own world and it could not have been more perfect.
The views around Caeser’s creek are not wildly impressive, but it was fun to do such a long hike and see so many different views! We were in the woods, then on the side of the highway (lol), then walking along the beach area, then going up and down hills…we were certainly never bored!
Lots of time to just walk and catch our breath. Other than the elbow pain, this was truly one of my very favorite days of our marriage!
A couple miles in, we pulled up an audiobook and listened to The Boys in the Boat for almost the whole hike. It was SO GOOD.
We ended up cutting off some random loops from the All Trails app, and ended up finishing the hike at 12 miles. It took us 4 hours and 34 minutes of hike time, Theo’s watch was tracking our total time, which ended up being a little over 5 hours with our 3 stops. And all that with a broken elbow haha.
Do I recommend this trail? Absolutely! It doesn’t have stunning views or any tourist appeal, but I’m so glad that we did such a long hike so close to home.
Would I do it again? Also, absolutely…but maybe not for another few years. I’d love to attempt it with the kids when they are a bit older. I’ve heard that this a monthly half marathon trail run that follows this course, and that might be something that I need to try next!