Wabash Trace Nature Trail-Iowa

The Wabash Trace spans 63 miles in Iowa from Council Bluffs to Blanchard. It’s a beautiful trail with lots of shade cover, travelling through rural farmland and little towns the railroad left behind. We decided to tackle this one by staying in towns that would give us the opportunity to ride out and back in one direction the first day, then out and back in the opposite direction the next day, giving us two nights at each location. For the first leg of the trip, we chose to stay in Malvern, Iowa and rode from Malvern to Council Bluffs and back the first day, for about 43 miles in distance.

Our accommodations were in an old church! This was one of the few places in town to stay. It’s owned by Zack, who moved back to his hometown after living in Colorado for several years. He was looking for space for his art studio and wanted to save a historic building. The church is approximately 150 years old and was last used for worship in 1969 by the Presbyterian congregation.

The lower floor is the Airbnb space and the upper floor is the art studio. He invites guests to take a look upstairs, and of course I couldn’t resist! I’m glad the beautiful building was saved and repurposed. It’s a treasure in this little town.

Malvern is a cute little town too, with friendly people. We ate dinner at the Classic Cafe and walked around to snap a few pictures.

We woke up to dark skies and a heavy downpour, which delayed us just a bit. We ate at C&M’s Cafe one of two restaurants in town, both mom and pop places, and had a hearty breakfast. The rain finally quit and we were soon able to get on the trail.

The Wabash Trace follows the old Council Bluffs and St. Louis Railway and first started in 1878. It traverses a route through rural country and connects a handful of little towns. One interesting characteristic of the land here, is that the Wabash Trace travels through the Loess hills area.This is the only place in the United States where this particular soil formation is found at such depth. In fact the only other place in the world similar, is in northern China. Loess hills (pronounced luss) were formed as glaciers retreated and consist of fine particles of wind-blown silt that form gently rolling hills. The unusual depth of the loess in this region is the unique thing about these hills, and the thing that makes them rare. It makes very fertile farm land, but is highly erosive, so farmers have had to take extra measures to keep the land in place. The beautiful farm fields are very healthy looking and most of them are terraced and have a series of earthen berms to keep the rich soil in place.

The skies soon cleared and we enjoyed the peaceful ride through beautiful farmland and tall grass prairie. There were a couple of people picking berries along the trail and I stopped to ask the first one I saw what he was picking. It was black raspberries, which grow wild all along the trail. He pointed the bushes out to me and I spotted them along the way as I rode, stopping to pick a few for a snack.

One thing we noticed as we rode, was what appeared to be remnants of train wrecks along the old rail line. I was beginning to wonder how dangerous rail travel must have been back in the day, there were so many wrecked rail cars! So I Googled it. In the 1940’s the railroad placed old rail cars along the banks of creeks to deter further soil erosion (another safeguard for the highly erosive loess soil!) Once I read that, I realized that all the “wrecked” rail cars I’d spotted, were on the banks of creeks. I guess the railroad was ahead of its time in 1940 to reuse, repurpose, and recycle.

One spot along the trail near Mineola though, actually did contain the remnants of a train derailment from 1928, one of the worse disasters on the line. It happened when a wooden trestle over a creek collapsed after a night of heavy rain. Driftwood had apparently collected around the trestle pilings and the pilings could not stand up to the force of water from the storm. Four people were killed in that wreck, when the trestle gave way and plunged the two engine cars and the 6 refrigerated meat cars into the 40 foot ravine. All four of the crewmen who died were from the same town in Missouri.

I took several photos in the little towns and along the trail. It turned into a gorgeous day once the rain had moved out.

On Thursdays, a local restaurant on the trail sponsors a Taco Ride. We just happened to be riding on a Thursday and stopped at Tobey Jack’s in Mineola to eat our tacos for lunch. I believe the dinner crowd for the taco ride in the evenings is much larger and likely much rowdier, but at lunch, we had the place to ourselves and enjoyed the delicious tacos! There’s also a cute old hotel right across the street, but thankfully we already had accommodations elsewhere!

We woke up the next morning to the sounds of a torrential downpour and to the sounds of things hitting the windows and door of the Airbnb as the wind blew. In fact, when we turned on the news, we saw that the straight-line winds had reached 100-120 mph as the storm (a derecho) had passed through.

We knew the trail would be even softer today after this second round of heavy rain. On yesterday’s ride we encountered several limbs across the trail from the storms the previous night. On today’s ride, after the storm that barrelled through last night, there were numerous limbs and trees across the trail. We cleared all we could, walked or lifted our bikes over or around others, until we got to a tree that was too big to move and too massive to walk around.

The ride was grueling in the soft, rain-soaked surface that grabbed our tires. It was difficult to get any momentum going because just as we’d pick up a little speed, we’d have to dismount for another fallen tree. When we were finally stopped in our tracks by the last tree, we’d traveled 16 very tough miles, and I was not disappointed to have to turn around at that point!

The only disappointment was that the spot where we’d planned to eat lunch was 6 miles past the fallen tree. We made it back to Malvern for a late lunch of cheeseburgers and fries at C&M’s Cafe. Though the ride on the soft surface was very tough, we still enjoyed the beautiful scenery. The trail surface is in great shape with no roots or potholes, but it is definitely a harder ride after 2 nights of heavy rain!

We left Malvern after our two day stay and relocated to Red Oak, Iowa, where we stayed at the Riverbend Heritage Lodge. We checked in, unloaded our things and went to find dinner in town. Red Oak is a bit larger than Malvern, so there were more options. The little town of Red Oak is beautiful, and I took several photos of the old courthouse built in 1890 of red limestone.

Red Oak is not on the bike trail, but it was an easy drive to access the trail. However, another rain set in, this one lasting all day, and we were not able to ride on our third day to conclude this trail. Instead, we used the rest day before heading to Minnesota tomorrow, and are thankful we’re in such a pretty spot to rest!