Spring 2022 trip - Day 2, April 24th - Chicago to Starved Rock State Park (IL) - 2 hikes totalling about 4miles

We got up nice and early Sunday morning and felt ready for the day.  It was misting and rainy but warm.  Brian drove in the morning as we made our way to our first hike location, Buffalo Rock state park.  Unfortunately, the forecast for the few hours after our arrival were stormy possibly including lightning.  So I frantically looked on my phone for museum type things to do that would be open on a Sunday in April.  Thankfully the Prairie aviation museum in Bloomington was open. We headed South to Bloomington and had a delicious calzone lunch at DP Dough in the very college focused Uptown part of Bloomington.  It was a really great calzone with fresh made dough and just the right balance of crust and filling.  The aviation museum was not very big but clearly represents the hard work of a small band of community members.  They have a number of aircraft on site but while we were there the storms came through (mostly wind and rain) and it was beyond any reasonable hope to venture outside in the buffeting rain.  Our time at the museum wasn't long but I enjoyed some of the exhibits and books, especially about blimps.

 



The drive back to Buffalo Rock was mostly on arrow straight and flat county roads.  The kind of roads we don't really have in NY though sometimes some of them SEEM flat and boring, they really are never as flat and straight as these were.  When Brian went to put on his hiking boots he couldn't figure out why they didn't look right for a minute. Turns out I had grabbed two left feet for him.  Brian has 2 identical pairs of Merrell boots and I thought the two pair were not together so I just grabbed 'a pair' and shoved them in the bag.  Brian did the 2.5 mile Buffalo Rock hike in sneakers and after checking into our room at Starved Rock Lodge we headed to Peru IL for a Kohl's run and an early dinner.

 
 

 

The hike along the bluffs had lovely scenery including some mounds which look like Indian mounds but are actually part of a large art installation that was put in at the time of the mine reclamation project.  The mounds are about all that is obviously left from the art installation and almost all the signage at Buffalo Rock was long removed or vandalized giving the park a bit of a forgotten about feel.  To our surprise, there are a handful of Buffalo at the park in a fenced enclosure.









Once we got back to the lodge we got in a wonderful sunset hike to the top of Starved Rock. And despite its well deserved reputation for being very very popular, we didn't see anybody else on the rock and only a few people on the way.  The staircases and boardwalks at the park are quite extensive and seem like they would be well setup to handle the crushing crowds this place sees in the summer.  The distance was only 1.3 miles plus a little wandering around the exterior of the lodge that we added but it was 220 steps. 





After our evening walk we were able to have the rare pleasure of a hot tub soak at the lodge.  Between screaming children, weird schedules, COVID restrictions and many other things it seems like the stars almost never align for us to use a hot tub when we travel.  It was a very relaxing end to a very busy good day.

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