Hickory Hill Black Hawk County Park is filled with a wide variety of ventures

By: Billie Ann Albert

If you follow my steps this week, be sure to take care for your fingers when feeding the goats grass through the fence, and maybe you’ll have more luck calling for the llama to come over for a share of the snacks. He never did for us. There were also bisen and elk, as well as chickens that stunk worse than the other animals.

Seniors Amanda Crockett, Konner Crew and I were going to go to Backbone this week, but we decided to save that for another week and drive a much quicker but still rewarding route to Hickory Hills last weekend. It’s only about 25-30  minutes away.

It is a small Black Hawk County park by La Porte City that has many options for fun including fishing, camping, nut gathering, going to the little zoo, basketball, sledding and much, much more. There are places to have picnics all around and multiple trails to hike along.

In the center of the park is Casey Lake, which is very pretty, and the flowers surrounding it made for some amazing pictures. I found this one yellow flower and put it on the railing of the bridge, and it just might be the best picture that I have ever taken in my opinion. I just love it so much because the railing goes back and looks like it never ends.

I got some other great pictures of the trees and leaves, but the flower is my favorite.

We saw a couple wooden bridges with spider webs on them, but those pictures didn’t turn out very well. I am terrified of spiders, so I had to make sure there weren’t any big ones of the webs; otherwise, I would freak out.

Very soon, the leaves will begin to turn to their autumn shades, so for those looking for an economical trip to beautiful oaks, maples, hickories, sumac and more, the road to Hickory Hills is just the ticket.