Snakes?
I don’t have my pictures from southern Illinois (with a side trip into Missouri) sorted yet, but I’m going to say this.
People are sleeping on southern Illinois. I don’t want it to turn into Finger Lakes, but there’s so much there.
Here are some highlights:
Close encounters with wild cottonmouths. I remain unbitten. The cottonmouths were actually pretty laid back.
Metropolis, IL, for tacky geek stuff…I found a really fun Superman shirt to bring home.
An actual dungeon crawl I hope my gaming group will appreciate.
Eagles, eagles, everywhere. Occasional vulture. Mostly eagles.
The best fried chicken I’ve had in years (Giant City Lodge).
And I’m going to add a reminder:
Don’t sleep on state parks and national forests! You can often get just as good an experience as at a National Park…for less money and with fewer crowds.
None of the parks we visited was charging for admission or parking. I was actually kind of annoyed there wasn’t even a donation box at a couple of them because I wanted to give them something for trail maintenance.
All were, in their own way, amazing, and we ran out of days before we ran out of cool places to check out.
Think about that when planning your next vacation. Yes, seeing Yosemite once was pretty awesome.
But these smaller, second tier parks have things you would never have thought you would see too.