We had only a short bit of time, so we decided to make our next stop in town. We thought the park wouldn't be that cool, since it's in town, so we figured it didn't matter if we only had a couple of hours. We were wrong! Ft. Ben is cool! It's a lot bigger than we thought and even has horseback riding.
We headed east on Kessler Blvd., which is also 56th St., and passed by Jerry Hostetler's house, featured in the book Weird Indiana, which we had purchased at Turkey Run. It's a giant, overly decorated house, which was added on to, and added on to, and added on to, for 30 years. This resulted in a 55,000 square foot mess, which you can see if you drive on 56th St., just east of Binford. The park is just north of 56th St. off of Glenn Road. The park was a military training facility until the early 90s and it was made into a state park in the late 90s. Many of the facilities within the park have been modified from their original military purposes. The dogs came with us this time, and at the parking lot, we followed the dogs off onto a deer path down to Fall Creek. We walked the deer paths for a while and saw what were quite sure were discarded military items, such as bombs. See photo.
We also hiked the Fall Creek trail, which as you may imagine, follows Fall Creek. It offered good views of the creek and some woods. The yellow foliage was bright and colorful. We were surprised to find some decent sized hills in the park, a sizable lake, and horse trails. The day we were there, it was Great Dane Day, and we got to see about a dozen of these horse-sized canines, though when Jesse asked their owners if we were on the horse trail, they were less than amused. There were a couple of other trails, as well as a paved bike path. We also saw some cool playgrounds for kids. We intend to go back in snowier weather so we can enjoy the badass sledding hill, which appears to be a former gun range. We checked out the horse barns, which appeared to have been barracks formerly. The horses have as nice as accommodations as the soldiers!
Since we misjudged the coolness of this in-town park, we do want to return, perhaps to ride horses and definitely to go sledding. There is also an Inn just outside the park gates and it would be fun to check out as well.
Ft. Harrison State Park
5753 Glenn Rd.
Indianapolis, IN 46216
317.591.0904
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