Spring Mill State Park, Mitchell, IN

[indiana_campin]

Stayed 3 nights at Spring Mill State Park in Southern Indiana and had a blast. The park is smaller than average, but we felt it was jam packed with fun.

The park features caves, a pioneer village with actual history behind it, pioneer cemetary, mountain bike trails, a decent pool, lodge, and trails. The campground was sizable and had clean facilities. A creek runs through the campground (behind sites 1-7, 24-29, and 50-75. why they couldn't put that on the map is beyond me).

Sites 1-29 are in a one-way loop, which is nicely wooded. Sites 50-62 are wooded as well, though higher-traffic. Most of the other sites are less wooded - a tree or two per site, mostly grassy. The sites that back up to the creek are wooded.

As you'll see on the website, the park has a pioneer village with perhaps a dozen buildings, a nice creek, and cool activities to watch (ie. cornmeal grinding in the grist mill, lumber cutting by water power). We spent several hours in the pioneer village.

The caves are wet, so they are mostly inaccessable. One cave has a small dry side, and the Twin Caves have an enjoyable (but short) boat ride. Make reservations early in the day, as the twin caves tour fills up.

The park closed their saddle barn recently, replacing horses with mountain bikes. There's about 2 miles of mountain bike trails currently -- they looked fun, but we didn't ride them. They plan to expand the system to 6 miles.

Great park, definately going back. About 2 hours south of downtown Indianapolis.

http://www.in.gov/dnr/parklake/properties/park_springmill.html

[indiana_campin]

I should add:

The DNR website really needs help. The parks are beautiful yet the website lacks decent photos. Every state park could have a sizable gallery of gorgeous photos showcasing the park, but they don't. Unfortunate, but I hear the Indiana DNR has only one web guy and he's overloaded.

[Lab-dog]

Indiana_Campin, we may have been there at the same time.  We just went there for the first time to camp the week before the 4th of July.  It was great.  We never plan enough time and couldn't get everything in that we wanted to do.

We also did the Blue Springs Caverns which is near there and very nice.  It is also toured in a boat, and much longer (1 hour) of a tour.  The kids really enjoyed it, so did we.

My only beef was that we camped near the RR's that were near the primitive and youth camping area.  Their councelor brought them all up to that bath house (with posted "NO YOUTH CAMPERS") and they promptly made a mess of the place.  Oh, I hope you weren't in that group.  Other than that little disturbance, it was wonderful.

Our kids saw LOTS of wild life and we had a great time.

[indiana_campin]

We were there the weekend before and were as far away from the youth area as we could We were across the road from the RR, but the loop we were in seemed less crowded and more heavily wooded, so we didn't notice it much.

Going to check out more caves next time!