Not Letting the Rain Stop Us at Potato Creek State Park
How we spent our Fourth of July camping weekend in northern Indiana
It had been nine years since our first camping trip at Potato Creek.
The first summer we had a camper during a Fourth of July weekend, we packed up our family and traveled west from Fort Wayne to spend a full weekend camping in the large Indiana park just south of South Bend. We biked, hiked, played in the water, and our three-year-old son began his love affair with bats when Jeff took our kids on a nature talk to learn about the bats inside the park.
When we decided we needed to make summer reservations for camping during the Fourth of July this year, we discovered that nearly every place we wanted to camp was booked, except for Potato Creek. (We made these reservations on January 10, so we clearly were not behind schedule, that’s just how quickly all of the reservations filled up for the holiday weekend.) We let both sets of parents and my sister and her family know, and we made reservations for a return trip to the state park during the weekend leading up to July 4th.
When you live in the Midwest, you never know what the Fourth of July is going to bring. The summer that our son was a newborn, I sat outside with him at a fireworks show with the temperatures barely dipping below 90-degrees after the sun went down. Four years later, we would camp along the shores of Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes and don sweatshirts and jeans as we headed off to a fireworks display.
This year we had to face storms and high humidity.
We decided to forego our first reserved night of camping for a night at home for our newly returned son, who had just finished a week of church camp away from his family. That meant getting up early so that we could finish loading up and get on the road. Except the rain started before we even left. The rain stopped for the last hour of our nearly three-hour drive and by the time we arrived at Potato Creek State Park, we could see patches of blue sky, but they wouldn’t stay. Our first day in the park was spent exploring the campground, waiting for our brother-in-law and nephew and nieces to arrive, and playing cornhole on our new cornhole boards until it was dark enough for a campfire.
Rain hit hard overnight, but by morning it had cleared out long enough for me to make a big breakfast and for the family to make plans for the day. We finally got the kids onto Trail 4 by the middle of the afternoon, as another storm moved in from the west. We listened to the thunder and then the rain falling on the forest canopy with one mile of our two-mile hike still to go, all of us getting wet but not drenched by the time we finally arrived back at the cars.
On our way back to the campground, we stopped at the nature center, which is one of the best nature centers that we’ve seen for kids. It has an upstairs loft with stuffed animals, children’s books about nature, a bird nest for kids to sit in, and a puppet show stage complete with animal hand puppets. After all of our kids, aged six to fourteen, had seen everything they wanted to see, we stopped at the fully stocked camp store for ice cream before returning “home” to the camper where more cornhole and both sets of grandparents now waited for time with grandchildren.
The next morning, we were greeted by a heavy mist that hung over the campground. The nights may have been cool, but the air was thick. Regardless, we had kids who needed to move. We took both of our kids and one niece on Trail 5, which is a one-mile loop accessible only in the campground. Jeff decided to also bring the dogs, our son running ahead with them to wear all three of them out before the hike was over. It wasn’t the most exciting hike, but it was a good chance to give everyone some exercise before more relaxing at the campsite.
After lunch and more relaxation, I decided to take what I had learned while hiking in Pokagon during Memorial Day weekend and take a solo hike on Trail 1, which starts at the nature center. While everyone else stayed back to play games and read, I enjoyed another two-mile hike on my own, taking pictures of Worster Lake and the pretty tree canopy that provided just enough shade to keep the hike in afternoon temperatures almost comfortable.
Our brother-in-law and kids left after dinner, so we sat around the campfire with the grandparents and waited for sunset before becoming the only family to participate in the Buck Moon hike with one of the park’s naturalists. The moon wasn’t out when we started on the two-mile night hike, but by the time we returned to the lake, it was out in its full glory, brightening up the night sky at the beach and at our campsite. It was a perfect way to end our three nights in the state park.
Potato Creek State Park will probably never be one of our favorite Indiana state parks, but it is certainly one that we enjoyed returning to. The wide-open sites provided plenty of room for our camper, screen tent, extra tent, and cornhole boards. The hikes take visitors through pretty forests and the three miles of paved bike paths give bikers options off of the open road. Our kids enjoyed being able to safely loop around the campground on their own bikes and the playgrounds still provided plenty of fun for our younger nieces. It is definitely worth staying at if you are looking for a place in northern Indiana, especially if the more popular Indiana Dunes State Park is completely booked.
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I love being transported to where you take me with these posts, Sarah - such a great read!
It sounds like the quintessential summer trip, the kind I always remember from growing up. Beautiful pics!