Oct 24, 2001 Last updated: 11/3/01 12:00pm CT
Before all the leaves fell off the trees, we took a day trip out to Starved Rock State Park in Illinois to do a little hiking and leave peeping. Starved Rock is located near Utica Illinois, where I-80 and I-39 cross. It took about 1 hour and 45 minutes to drive there. Not a very exciting drive either, very flat and open farm land. But when you get there, you’ll be dumbfounded that this place exists in Illinois.
Starved Rock is named by a legend that says the Illiniwek were trapped at the top of this butte by the Potawatomi and starved to death. Visit the link to Starved Rock for the whole story.
There are over 13 miles of hiking trails wandering around the shore of the Illinois River and around the 18 canyons. Some of the trails are paved, some are dirt. There are some stairs for climbing the serious hills, but you can choose to avoid them if you’re not up to it. We hiked around for about 3 hours, only getting rained on in the last hour. We didn’t cover the whole place, but we managed to see some great things.
Here’s a view of the foliage looking out from on top of Starved Rock. You had to be there to really appreciate the colors.
About the coolest part of the trail was in to LaSalle Canyon. At the end was a small waterfall that you can actually walk up to and behind! Here are pictures of the waterfall and of us behind the waterfall. A gentleman from Arlington Heights was taking pictures and we asked him to take one of us.
If you live anywhere near here and you’ve never been to Starved Rock, you really should check it out.