5 Family-Focused Tips for Visiting Maquoketa Caves State Park

5 Family-Focused Tips for visiting Maquoketa Caves State Park

We recently got back from a week-long family camping trip to the Maquoketa Caves State Park in eastern Iowa. As a family with three young children (currently 2 1/2, 5, and 7), I’m writing this post as a family-focused resource for others who may visit in the future. I didn’t find a ton of visitor resources for families prior to our visit, so I thought I’d share our tips for others. If you find this useful, please share!

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Here are 5 Family-Focused Tips You Need to Know Before Visiting Maquoketa Caves State Park:

1. 3 and Under, Bring a Hiking Carrier

If you have a little one joining you on your trip to the caves, I’d highly recommend borrowing or investing (if you’ll be an avid hiking family) in a hiking carrier for toddlers. You should also consider looking on Facebook Marketplace for these items because there are some great, affordable options there!

I was scouring Marketplace ahead of our trip, and then decided to just see if any friends/family had a decent one we could borrow. And they did! We had a few offers, and we borrowed a Deuter Kid Comfort carrier. It was a game-changer and we were so glad to have it for the week.

2. Make Sure You Have Headlamps or Flashlights

This is a big one for anyone visiting the caves, not just families. I would highly recommend having headlamps. We took one with us, and then saw a three-pack of headlamps at Wal-Mart after our first hiking day and bought it (around $24).

: Dance Hall Cave

It is so much easier to hike and crawl around hands-free throughout the park. Flashlights also work well for a quick hike!

3. Prioritize Bug Spray Over Sunscreen

We went to the Maquoketa Caves in the middle of June. It’s been fairly wet this spring, and the park is very wooded. While the mosquitoes weren’t dreadful, the little black gnats were (note, we didn’t see one tick our entire stay)! Because most of the hiking trails and caves are well-shaded and not exposed to a ton of sun, I would recommend prioritizing bug spray over sunscreen (linked the one we like to use). Bug spray helped a ton every single day.

4. Camp at the Maquoketa Caves State Park

I would highly recommend staying at the Maquoketa Caves State Park campground while visiting the park. It is situated conveniently to the park, so you have great access to the trails and caves. The campground isn’t very big, but it does turn over a lot throughout the week because of the park’s popularity. It’s a great campground for family camping.

We were also pleasantly surprised at the offerings from the park naturalist. She hosted a free, short hike to picnic spot, followed by a guided tour of a few of the caves. We also loved seeing a Free Little Library on-site, as well as free activity library stocked by the naturalist for kids. They also provide wood to campers on a free will donation basis; that was awesome!

I go into more detail in this blog post about why we chose the State Park campground.

5. How Long is Enough Time to Fully Explore the Park?

If you really want to take your time and explore the park in its entirety, I’d recommend giving yourself 2-3 days (pending good weather) at the park. Our kids loved hiking the caves, so we spent two half-days hiking. We split the park into two and did the north side the first day (this is more scenic, trail hiking to many of the smaller caves), and then we did our guided hike/tour with the naturalist on the south side the second day (which is fewer caves but they’re bigger and more traveled). Then, we went to a few of our favorites again on a third day.

Keep in mind, we have young kids (7, 5, 2 1/2) so we move fairly slowly through hikes right now. We also only did about four hours of hiking each day because, well, kids. haha

Bonus Tip:

One general rule that we’ve learned over the past few years of parenting on trips, especially camping trips, is that if we’re going to make the effort to go, we need to make it worth our while. Meaning, we go for longer stints of time and rarely camp for only a night or two.

To be even more specific, we’ve started planning our bigger trips to go from Sunday – Friday, and its served us very well every time. By scheduling it this way, we have the Saturday prior to pack up and prepare, and then we come back and have a whole weekend ahead of us to unpack and settle back in at home. While we’re camping, we avoid major crowds over the weekends and get to enjoy the campground more this way. We love it, and specifically plan our trips this way as much as we can now.

I hope these 5 family-focused tips help you in planning your trip to the Maquoketa Caves State Park. It’s comforting to feel a bit more prepared for what to expect when you haven’t been somewhere before, especially as a parent. I hope this post has provided you with some helpful tips to make your trip a bit more enjoyable.

Happy Planning!

-Mackenzy

5 Family-Focused Tips for Visiting Maquoketa Caves State Park