Trek Our Trails
Our popular Trek our Trails challenge has evolved to an ongoing program.
About the Trek our Trails Challenge
Our popular Trek our Trails challenge has evolved from #trekourtrails2021 to an ongoing program. Visit all six of our most popular preserves before the end of the year to complete the #trekourtrails2025 challenge and receive a little gift pack! The preserves are…
Here’s how to take part…
- Plan your visit by checking out the preserve pages linked above.
- Before or after your hike, take a photo of you and your companions at the preserve’s sign or trailhead.
- Email the photo to twillis@conservingindiana.org. Please indicate whether we have permission to post it.
- Optional but suggested: Enable us to plant trees as a carbon offset for your travel miles. (See our carbon calculator.)
After you’ve visited these six sites, we will mail all trekkers in your party a CILTI pin and the #trekourtrails2025 sticker. We’ll also enter you into a drawing for CILTI logo gear. The cutoff to enter this year is Dec. 31, 2025. See you on the trail!
Public Access: open
Nearest City: Shelbyville
Acres: 95
Meltzer Woods is one of Indiana’s last remaining fragments of old growth forest. “Old growth” means the land has trees more than 150 years old and has been left as forest for a century or more. This is a special place where you can walk under majestic trees, some dating back to the 1600s. Much of our state looked like this when European settlers first arrived.
Public Access: open
Nearest City: Trafalgar
Acres: 149
The Laura Hare Preserve at Blossom Hollow offers a quiet refuge for humans and wildlife. Blossom Hollow is part of a large unbroken hardwood forest block, habitat that is key for migratory birds and forest interior nesting birds. On its ridges, mature white and red oaks cling to slopes covered with ferns and wildflowers. In the creek valley below, the bedrock is dotted with granite chunks—evidence of the glaciers that once covered these hills.
Public Access: open
Nearest City: Fishers
Acres: 77
Lying alongside the White River, this property offers views of glorious summer wildflowers in season, with a mix of prairie plants and oak savanna. Along the river to the south, bottomland forest is growing. These are the result of our restoration efforts in 2008, when we planted over 19,000 trees here.
Public Access: open
Nearest City: Avon
Acres: 80
Burnett Woods Nature Preserve offers a tranquil hike through mature woodlands in the midst of a largely developed area near Avon. Fall colors and spring wildflowers make this a seasonal destination spot, but its canopy is cooling even on the hottest days of summer.
Public Access: open
Nearest City: Indianapolis
Acres: 53
Situated along the White River, Oliver’s Woods Nature Preserve offers a nature immersion in the midst of a bustling commercial district. This urban nature preserve encompasses 16 acres of woods, 37 acres of prairie-savanna restoration, and a mile of White River frontage.
Public Access: open
Nearest City: Martinsville
Acres: 68
Part of the Long Ridge conservation area, Meyer Nature Preserve’s steep slopes, ridges and valleys offer a dramatic hike through a large forest block unbroken by roads. Its forest interior habitat shelters rare native species like hooded and worm-eating warblers, Eastern box turtle, and the state-endangered cerulean warbler.
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