Great Parks along the 2010 RAGBRAI Route - Sioux City
By now you have a lot of miles in the saddle and are probably anxious to be biking on RAGBRAI next week. You may even have packed your “Bike It” shirt from the Iowa Nature Store.
After you arrive in Sioux City on Saturday and get settled in at a campground or with your host family, you will want to get a few miles in and stretch those legs a little. I suggest you will be very happy with a little ride north to Stone State Park and Dorothy Pecaut Nature Center. The center tells the story of the geology, plants and animals of the loess hills region of western Iowa and features a variety of interpretive displays, including a "walk-under" prairie, a 400-gallon aquarium of native fish, and natural history dioramas. A children's discovery area provides opportunity to handle furs, antlers, fossils, and other artifacts. Two miles of hiking trails exist around the nature center. The center is managed by the Woodbury County Conservation Board. A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp was located in the northwestern area of the park from 1935 to 1939. The CCC were responsible for constructing the majority of the park's facilities, including: entrance portals, staff residences, the Calumet shelter, and the rustic stone lodge. The Nature Center will be open on Saturday from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.
By Pat Curtis
Visitors to Iowa's state parks could face overgrown grass and overflowing trash cans this summer. State parks bureau chief Kevin Szcodronski says cleaning and mowing will be reduced because of budget cuts.
"So, we really need the help of park visitors to understand what we're going through and understand that we're trying our best," Szcodronski said. "But, we know it's not going to be good enough. It's not going to be up to our standards, but there's not much we can do."
The state hiring freeze has also affected the state parks workforce. There are eight out of roughly 100 full-time jobs that are being left vacant. "That's going to be noticeable," Szcodronski said. "We have some parks that may only have one full-time person assigned to them now."
The state parks also hire seasonal help in the summer, but Szcodronski says the hours those employees typically work could be cut in half. Szcodronski says federal stimulus dollars could help the situation. Iowa has applied for funding through the Americorps and Youthcorps programs.
"They're basically programs that are available at 100-percent federal funding to bring young adults and other people into the parks to help us. We're going to find out about that in a couple weeks. We applied for lots and lots of those workers," Szcodronski said. "So, if we get that and can find the people to fill those slots, we're going to be in a lot better shape this summer and next summer."
Szcodronski says the D.N.R. is also working to make facilities at the state parks more energy efficient. Over the past year, nearly $750,000 have been spent to upgrade utilities. From Radio Iowa -
Great Parks along the 2010 RAGBRAI Route - Sioux City
