For Mother's Day, we decided to get out of town for a little bit and check out Fort Robinson State Park. I've been a few times since we moved to Nebraska, but it was Noelle's first visit in years, and Sierra's first visit ever. I had wanted to hike the Wagon Wheel Trail from the Crawford City Park to Lover's Leap. However, we were unable to find the trailhead in the park and so ended driving to the headquarters building to purchase a vehicle pass and hike from the Red Cloud Buttes Trailhead.
We were greeted by a herd of longhorn cattle at the trailhead.
We climbed the gate and started to make our way up towards McKenzie Pass.
We said goodbye to one last solitary longhorn,
and then continued on our way, climbing up to the saddle.
Along the way, we were treated to views of beautiful wildflowers in bloom.
It was a pretty steep climb, but we stopped pretty often for breaks.
After reaching the saddle, we descended to a junction with the Wagon Wheel Trail, the trail I had intended to hike. We made a left onto the Lover's Leap Trail and started to ascend pretty steeply again. There were lots of great views from this section of trail.
Soon, we found ourselves at the last landmark before the start of the scramble up to the summit of Lover's Leap. It's a sandstone hoodoo known as Grant's Thumb.
From the thumb, we contoured around the west side of the Lover's Leap bluff to an angled crack that we climbed up to the top.
We spent some time relaxing on the summit and exploring a bit. There were some really pretty flowers growing nearby.
and past Grant's Thumb
for the descent back to the car.
Along the way, the smell of clove currant perfumed the air. The smell must have attracted this tiger swallowtail butterfly.
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