Sunday, November 1, 2009

Starved Rock State Park: The 7th Wonder of Illinois!


Yesterday Tiff thought to herself, "Self, what would be a good thing to do on this fall day, I know! Let's drive an hour and a half up to Starved Rock State Park!" It's the only place in a loooooong ways that you can pseudo-hike, so we loaded up the truck and headed north, with aspirations of a peaceful walk in the woods. We arrived, followed the signs to the "hiking trails" and this is what we found:

Looks like we've had some rain! No this is not a boat ramp, and yes those are trash cans out in the water. It kind of reminded me of our trip to the swamp in South Carolina-without the gators. Luckily, we found another trailhead, and all was not for naught! We hit the trail, put our Chariot through it's paces (it worked great, by the way), and had a good time taking in the Autumn scenery.



Hiking was different, it was mostly on boardwalks and there were a LOT of stairs. They have a pretty bad erosion problem with all of the rain, so they try to keep you off the ground and on the trail.
My beautiful wife next to the Illinois River.

And one sad little bear.

I bet we can make it to the falls...