Within the National Grasslands lies Toadstool Park. I had never even heard of this park until a few weeks ago. Where have I been? You have to drive even further from the bison kill site to find Toadstool Park. There are no park rangers or any staff at the park. There are about 6 spots to camp in if you want.
The idea is that you can follow the path into the park to see the rock formations. Unfortunately for someone like me who is not in shape for rock climbing, there are no warnings how difficult it becomes. There is a little pamphlet at the beginning that tells you there are 9 markers to get through the path.
No problem getting through one and two. That's where I should have stopped, but no, we trudged on. At first the rocks were rough but you could climb over them. I was carrying my good camera and I was afraid of slipping. By the time we got to marker number 5, it was getting scary for me. Being short, made it difficult to get up to the next level at times. My friend was most helpful to me and my camera. We made it through the steep cliffs warning the travelers to be careful.
We made it past marker number 7 and then were were stumped. We could see the next marker but no path to it on the top of the high rocks. I will show several more views of the park so you can see what I am talking about. We referred to the pamphlet and then it said the next thing to do was to "scramble up the rock". It was a hot sunny day in the middle of the afternoon. I thought I might need to be helicoptered out of there, but knew there was no cell phone service. My friend (who probably could have made it) said we should turn back. Even that scared me, but there was no alternative.
We had a long exhausting day by the time we made it back to the park. We had been to Fort Robinson, the bison kill site, and now rock climbing. My legs ached the next two days and have no plans to ever do that again, but and it's a big but, I'm pretty proud that we made it past 7 of 9 markers. I knew I wasn't up to scrambling the next rock. Either my camera or I or both would never have made that one. However, I am very sorry that I didn't get a photo of the rock we were supposed scramble. If I did that much exercise every day, I would get in shape or die.
Nebraska Nellie
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