If you are looking for a nice place to have a Mother’s Day picnic, I’ve found the spot for you: a nice park in Lancaster.

After driving past rows and rows and rows and rows of corn, we turned left into Bear Creek Nature Park. If you take the first left, this will lead you to the head of a horse trail, where we met Blaze, an 18-year-old horse.

If you stay on the main road and drive past the first turn, it leads you to a pond, where you can catch and release fish. There are also LOTS of picnic tables placed under LOTS of trees and plenty of space to roam around.

I talked with a nice fisherman when we were there and he said he has caught many fish in the past, but you HAVE to be careful for snakes. He’s seen water moccasins and copperheads, which is why he was wearing his fishing boots.

For our hike, I took a picture of the trail map linked below in case there wasn’t a map on site, and I’m glad I did because otherwise I would have likely gotten lost. The map is pretty helpful, and when I wasn’t sure which direction to go, I usually took the path to the right. There is a point on the trail where there are three options; the first two options adds a small loop to the trail, the final option swings you back around to the parking lot. Toward the end of the horse trail, there is an option to go left or right, and I went left which ultimately took us to the pond. We would have been fine going either direction. I should also note that you cross a small creak two times. For us, there wasn’t a lot of water, but it might be a little tricky to cross the creek after a recent rain.

I found a page that said the horse trail was 2.24 miles, but we omitted some optional paths; the walking path around the pond is 6/10 of a mile.

There was quite a bit of horse poop, so beware, and I would use bug spray as well as sunscreen; the horse path isn’t too shady. There were many varieties of wildflowers, and I would expect many more to bloom soon. There is also a nice, clean bathroom available.

Length: We walked 1.8 miles round trip, google map, trail map, video tour.