Out on the Trails: Prairie Lakes Trail

Photos by Ash Seery

This is the second in a series of articles titled, Out on the Trails, which details and reviews different trails featured around the Cedar Valley. According to the American Discovery Trail Society, Cedar Falls is considered a premier “trail town,” and by combining mile counts with Waterloo, the Cedar Valley area boasts over 130+ miles of paved, hard, and soft trails. If you’ve been following along with this series, last time we reviewed the UNI Biological Preserve Trails, which we deemed perfect for beginners who want to hop straight into a forest setting. However, if you are uncomfortable with diving headfirst into nature, I believe the Prairie Lake Trails, which we will be the subject of this article, is the perfect fit for you. 

The Prairie Lake Trail encompasses the entirety of the Prairie Lakes Park, which is used for common recreational purposes like fishing and settling down for a picnic. This trail also consists of two loops, one that circles around a wooded area of the park and passes by the smaller of the two lakes, and a larger loop circling around the larger second lake. Unlike the previous entry in the series, the UNI Biological Reserve Trail, this trail is completely paved, allowing for either a brisk walk or a steady bike ride. The smaller loop takes about 30-40 minutes to complete, while the larger loop takes about an hour. Overall, the two loops it allows trail goers to pace themselves and take an easy walk in nature. 

One of my biggest problems with the Prairie Lakes Trail is how close it is to Hudson Road and Viking Road. Viking Road, in particular, is home to many grocery stores and restaurants. This means that it is quite common to find grocery bags acting like tumbleweeds alongside the trails. The park is also neighboring the industrial park, housing well-known businesses like Martin Bros. Combining all these factors, it can really bring down the immersion of oneself into nature within the park. Additionally, it also makes seeing wildlife pretty uncommon. The wildlife you will likely see is the ones in the lakes, such as ducks, geese, etc., but that is pretty much it.

A good thing about the trail that I did recognize was its recent addition to the Cedar Valley trails system as a whole. Although the Prairie Lakes Trail has indeed been a part of the Cedar Falls Community for a long time, recently, as of July 2025, the Prairie Lakes Trail has undergone construction to connect it to the large Cedar Valley trail system. In the latter half of the park, you can go under an overpass and appear on the opposite side of Viking Road. By creating this pathway, it connects The Prairie Lake trails to the trails system snaking through the Cedar Valley. Specifically, this path leads to part of the Greenhill trail, which then connects to a larger trail known as the Cedar Prairie Loop, but those trails are topics for other articles in the series.  Regardless, this new addition to the Cedar Prairie Lakes trail allows more serious trail goers to decide if they want to experience a brisk walk or an entire adventure.

So whether you decide to try the new addition to the Prairie Lakes trail, or venture around Prairie Lakes’ two trail loops, the Prairie Lakes trail is a nice way to get outside and explore the outdoors now that the weather is finally warming up.