Bacon Creek Park — Attraction in Sioux City

Bacon Creek Park is a bit of a hidden secret. The journey to find the park, for me, was best found with GPS as I was not terribly familiar with the area.

This is a park for outdoor nature lovers. A decent size lake, play-ground equipment, paved walking/running trails, and single-track mountain biking trails.

I was here primarily for the mountain biking. I really enjoyed the trails here. I think that these trails would likely be best ridden clockwise. Trails are not particularly well marked (as it is with so many local systems). A light recon of the area finds them easily enough. When I return, I will likely park at the first parking lot, ride back toward the entrance, looking to the left for the trail in, to start my counter-clockwise ride. On this visit, I rode clockwise from the very furthest from entrance lot - it's do-able, fun, but was quite challenging and there were several trail features that told me that the flow was designed to be counter-clockwise.

The trail is a very midwest typical forest floor & meadow mix which rides around a main valley with the lake ate the bottom. Several elevation changes via the smaller sub-valleys (reentrants) off the primary valley. I had time to crank out 4 miles while here, but had to duck out before completing the whole of the trail.

If word gets out about the mtn bike trail... it'll be a lot more busy that the Saturday I was there. There were many other people here - everyone I met was amazingly friendly.

Ride clean, be...

This is a great park. No motor craft allowed, but you can paddle boat, canoe, etc. A lot of people come here to fish as well. No swimming here. There is a nice walk trail that rounds the circumference of the lake, and a lot of people walk it, jog, or ride a bicycle around it. I believe it’s about somewhere around 3 miles to make the trek, so make sure you’re prepared for that be fire you start, because once half way around, you’re committed. No bathrooms along the route, although there are in the main area. If your kids are tired on that trek, you’ll need to carry them or encourage them to continue. It’s a great wooded and twisty path. There are also shelters here, picnic tables and benches scattered around, and grills as well. You’ll find playground structures for the little ones if that helps out. This park also has a decent sized fenced in dog park for those who could benefit from that. Considering a lot of people are generally there, it’s so large and spread out that it still usually feels...

This was a beautiful place to spend the day rain or shine. There was a large shelter so we weren't baking in the sun and were protected from rain, plenty of picnic tables for our large gathering. Play area was perfect for children and there was plenty of grassy area to lounge and play catch. Many people went fishing and actually caught some large fish. There are also public bathrooms which were clean and modern which is something I didn't really consider until I needed to use the restroom So that was a nice surprise. This place was far enough away to get away from the city but still close enough to make it convenient. Overall it was a beautiful fun place and I highly recommend it and I plan on coming back...