Running at Charlestown State Park

For the past 2 months, my running has pretty much consisted of Jefferson Memorial Forest, Creasy Mahan, or country roads by my house. These are all great training places for my upcoming trail race, but I missed checking out new places.  I was pretty excited when my trail running sister, Marian,  suggested exploring a new park recently to change it up a bit. I offered up Charlestown State Park in southern Indiana which is about a 40 minute drive for both of us. We could run all 7 trails for about 13 miles. Neither one of us have been there, so the decision was pretty easy to check it out.

We carpooled from Kentucky, traveling over the new toll bridge over the Ohio River. The bridge was just finished this past December and has made traveling to my home state of Indiana much easier for my family and I.

The park was pretty easy to find just off of 62 with a big sign out front. Since we visited during the slow season, it was free to get in the park. Otherwise, out-of-staters have to pay $9 and in-state is $7.
We grab a map at the gatehouse. The park was really easy to navigate with just one main road and signs with the trails on this main road.

We typically run with our hydration vests and fuels, but fortunately with all the trails being under 3 miles we were able to leave these in the car and hydrate after each trail. When we started running the temperature was 28 degrees, frozen ground,  so we did not have to worry about our water freezing with them in the car.

Here is a brief summary of the trails.
Trail 1: This trail is marked as a rugged 2.4m trail on the park map. The footing on here was rocky and rooty in some parts. There were some cool big rocks that the trail went through along with overlooks of the Fourteenmile Creek. My Garmin got about 2.3m with 285 elevation gain.

Trail 2: This trail is marked as a moderate 1.4m trail on the park map. This had some small waterfalls that were fun to see along the trail. We got about 1.3m with 135 elevation gain. Everything was very runnable on this trail.

Trail 5: This trail is marked as a moderate 1.2m trail. It is located in the campground area. There is a platform overlooking the creek that was beautiful to see. I can only imagine what it would look like in the spring with the spring flowers up. We got 1.7m with 148 elevation gain. It was all pretty runnable as well.

Trail 4: This trail is marked as a rugged 2.9m. This was probably my least favorite trail based on scenery. The views from the other trails were just a little bit better in my opinion. However, we were on a quest to run all the trails today and with the sun shining in our faces we kept going. It seemed if a trailed was marked rugged, it was usually because of some elevation gain as well as some tricky footing with rocks and roots. This trail came up as 2.7m with 276 elevation gain.

Trail 7: This trail is marked as an easy 0.9. It is called the Rose Island Loop Trail. We started our running watches really at Trail 3. About the first half mile was a paved, steep downhill leading to a Portersville Bridge across the Fourteenmile Creek to Rose Island. This was one of my favorite trails. Rose Island used to be home to an amusement park in the 1920s. However, with the Great Depression and the flood in 1937, it was damaged beyond repair. Signs were around this trail with pictures and stories about the amusement park. With part of Trail 3 on our watches, we came up with 1.5m  with 59 elevation gain.

Portersville Bridge to Rose Island

Rose Island sign

Remnants from where the dance hall was. There also remnants showing where the pool, cottage, hotel. dining hall were located.

One of my favorite views.

Trail 3: This trail is marked as a rugged 2.1 miles. It loops by Trail 7. Part of the trail is paved as mentioned above and the other part is on the trail. Parts of this trail were very rocky and the climb up/down could be slippery if it had been more wet. This trail came up 1.5 on our watches since we did not include the pavement portion that we included for Trail 7. This had 302 of elevation gain.

Trail 6: This trail is marked as a rugged 2.3miles located at the far end of the park along the Ohio River. It had a steep climb at the start with bigger rocks to climb through. Then we ran along the bluff overlooking the river seeing the Kentucky side of the river. We came across a bridge overlooking a waterfall that was beautiful, but no really good places that had an overlook to it. Once crossing the bridge we figured out that the Trail sign had been turned around so we turned it back and continued on a descent to run along the river. Once along the river, it was an easy, flat run back to the car. We got 2.3miles with 272 elevation gain for this trail on our GPS watch which was spot on.

Rocky climb up to the bluff.

The fun descent down to the Ohio River.

The waterfall with no good overlook to it.

This park would be great to bring the kids and a picnic or even go camping for a night or two. They did have two playgrounds and some open fields to fly kites, play ball or whatever else your family may enjoy. 

This is just what we needed as we head into taper week for our first ultra - a 60K.  I would not want to run there after a rain. As the morning warmed up and the ground thawed, there were some slick muddy spots along the trails. The climbs were easier than Jefferson Memorial Forest. We still got 13+ miles in with 1000+ elevation gain. Bonus, we got to see the Ohio River from the other side for a change. It did not even feel like a training run for me. It felt like I was just out exploring in the woods with a friend stopping to enjoy the journey along the way.