Wabash Trace Trail / Mineola to Silver City

Section Hiking the Wabash Trace Trail | Mineola to Silver City, IA | April 2021

Curtis’ birthday fell on a Friday this year, and besides having to go into work for a few hours, we got to spend most of the day together! This was a huge improvement compared to the past few years, when he was somehow always standing duty on his birthday. And then last year on his birthday we found out he’d be leaving in a week for at least a month…fun times.

This year, he requested we spend the afternoon hiking, so we drove across the river into Iowa to continue our section hiking of the Wabash Trace Trail. We returned to Mineola where we had started last time, but this time we set off on the trail heading Southeast to Silver City. We passed a few groups at the beginning, but were alone for much of our hike. Among the people we did see, our giant backpacks made us stand out and drew out a few questions.

It had been 2 weeks since the last time we were here, and we were thrilled to see more signs of spring appearing along the trail. The grass was greener, leaves were beginning to bud, and there were wildflowers popping up everywhere. We spotted some violets along the trail, as well as purple henbit deadnettle sprawled out through the farmland and along the edge of the trail (not that we knew what that was off the top of our head, we had to look it up later).

We ended up walking the full 4 miles to Silver City, where we sat for a while in the town park, and then began our return. The sun was out for most of our hike down, but as soon as we started heading back, it seemed that the winds changed and we watched as the clouds filled in from the West. Overall this was a pretty easy section of the trail, and it felt even more remote than the stretch between Mineola to Dumfries. You can check out our Alltrails recording here.