Hanging Rock State Park

Hiking & Camping in Hanging Rock State Park | Indianapolis, IN State Capitol Building | Driving from NC to IA days 2 & 3 | November 2022

We awoke in our tent in Hanging Rock State Park bright and early on Saturday morning, and immediately prepared to go for a hike. One of the incentives for camping and hiking here is that the highest point in the park at the observation tower counts towards Curtis’ new goal of hiking 300 300-Meter prominence points by 40. We expect this goal to take precedence over our high pointing goals because there’s so many more we could hike, and they’re all over the place so we should be able to find some most places the company sends us.

I had chosen a campsite that was right next to the trailhead, so we simply got up, bundled up, and started walking. It was chilly, but we were fine as long as we were moving. The trail lead us passed a small amphitheater, down and across a creek, then started the long ascent up to the peak. Somehow Charlotte got it in her mind that we should hurry, so she set a quick pace that left us huffing and puffing the whole way up. Curtis and Charlotte made it to the peak long before I did, but once we were all up we took our time to enjoy the views and early morning light.

The peak, known as Moore’s Knob (there are a lot of things named after the Moore family), is one of the furthest East mountains in the Mid-Atlantic and is considered to be part of the Sauratown Mountains – a very prominent and isolated range away from the main Appalachians. Because of its isolation and prominence, from here you can see well into Virginia and Tennessee, parts of the Blueridge Mountains, and a ways to the South and East. We stayed as long as we could stand the cold and slight breeze, then turned around and made our way back.

We packed up our campsite, had some breakfast, then hit the road. Today’s drive was about 7 hours and took us through Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and right across the Indiana border where we stayed in a hotel that night. The lows were in the teens, so camping wasn’t even a consideration for us that night!

On the last day of our drive, we only had about 6 hours to go to reach my parent’s home. We decided that since it was a Sunday, this would be a good chance to see the Indiana state capitol building in Indianapolis, because early Sunday mornings are usually the best time to enjoy a quiet downtown capitol area. The drive started off lovely with a light pastel colored sunrise behind us and a quiet interstate. However, we always joke that Indiana is “the road construction state” because the traffic and construction is what always slows us down when driving between Iowa and Michigan, and today that motto held true because part of I-70 through downtown was closed off leaving us in stand-still traffic for a while.

We finally made it downtown, only to find that it was still miserably cold with temperatures in the teens with quite a breeze. Our walk around the capitol was very brief, then we hurried back to our car. It was indeed quiet downtown though and it would’ve been fun to explore a little more, especially the state park near the river, the pedestrian bridge, and the myriad of monuments and old buildings we drove past, but today was just too cold to enjoy them.

We finished up our drive by going straight home after that, excited to be celebrating Thanksgiving with family for the third year in a row, but also a little shocked by the cold and snow that welcomed us — we were a little spoiled already from our weeks in the South! We had a fun holiday weekend celebrating with my family, Nanna, sister’s significant others, and our niece’s first ever Thanksgiving.

After that, Curtis had to return to North Carolina for a few more weeks of training. We had debated making another trip of it, but there were a few events going on at home that I wanted to be present for, and we decided doing this drive two weekends in a row was a little much. So instead, Curtis flew down and back on his own, and had a few more adventures in the South in December. He’ll share more about that in the next posts!