Spring 2022 trip - Day 4, Tuesday April 26th - Starved Rock State Park (IL) to Kansas City (MO) - 1 hike totalling about 4 miles

Brian drove us from Starved Rock to breakfast in Lacon IL and then on to the hike near Forrest City IL.  We drove along the swollen Illinois River for a good part of the trip.  Basically we spent the last 2 or 3 days focused on, hiking near, driving along and looking at the Illinois river.  It was an interesting character in the story of our trip so far.

 The setting for the hike was very nice.  Sand Ridge state forest is an isolated quiet spot, we saw only 1 other vehicle and zero people on foot the entire time we were there. It's a nice stand of predominantly pine trees with a sandy soil.  The hike I found on Alltrails was called 'Orange trail' but we found out after an hour that following the orange blazes didn't keep us on track where we planned to be.  Really there was no difference between any of the trails and paths that are blazed. They are all covered in sand, sometimes deep sand, and probably mostly intended for equestrians.  So we used the actual map in Alltrails and crafted our own partial loop around the area.  If the trails hadn't been covered in sand it would been a very easy hike but walking miles on sand is more tiring.  The weather was wonderful, dry and sunny but only in the 50's most of the day.






 

After the hike I wanted to explore a route that IL and MO co-operated on around 2010 to give people a way to get from Chicago to Kansas City without going through Saint Louis etc.  We picked up 'Route 110/CKC' in Macomb IL.  It is clear IL did a lot of 4 lane expansions to make this route more suitable for commercial traffic. It was an absolutely wonderful drive.  To say the traffic was minimal is an understatement.  It was almost entirely open road with nobody or sometimes a couple of cars visible going the same direction off to the horizon.  From reading, it sounds like the CKC hasn't been a big hit with truckers or the public in general but as an enjoyable way to cover a lot of miles I can't imagine how anybody would choose I-55 and I-70 over this.  Still, it's a long journey.

We stopped at a casino in Kansas City and it was pretty late by the time we got to out hotel.  The Hotel Kansas City is gorgeous.  This is our first time trying a property from Hyatt's 'Unbound collection' and it's quite a treat.  The building was a social club for years and was just converted to its current hotel use for an opening in 2020.  Unlike some other visually impressive places we've stayed, the design of our room and the hotel in general doesn't sacrifice usefulness for the sake of visual appeal.

Wednesday will be spent with friends and exploring Kansas City.

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