Travel Rogue

August 20, 2005

Hiking in Starved Rock

Beautiful morning. Dave and I headed to the Lodge for breakfast. Oh my, protein and carbs. We got there before the morning crowd, so were able to enjoy a nice, meandering meal. From there, we went back to camp, grabbed our gear (i.e., camera, water bottles and camelbak), and made our way to the trails. What started off as a relatively gray, moist morning cleared into a beautiful afternoon. We hiked about three miles through the park, basically up to Starved Rock and out east to Lone Tree Canyon (which, by the way, has multiple trees). Think my favorite feature was Wildcat Canyon though. It's one of the first big ones you come across and offers great views of the river and canyon formations. The really nice thing about Starved Rock, is that they put in stairs to help hikers climb the elevation. The really nasty thing about Starved Rock is that there are so many stairs. On the loop around back, we took a set of stairs at a relatively good pace. Got to the top panting and grinning. Man, I think I'm in pretty good cardio shape, but I had to sit down for a bit to catch my breath. We hear some hikers headed our way and approach the descent. "Read somewhere it's 160 steps," says one of them. He's got a toddler perched on his shoulders, who looks awfully cute in a beige floppy hat and jeans. And that's only one set of stairs. There didn't seem to be too much wildlife, although I did get bit twice. Then again, I always get bitten by skeeters and other such creepy crawlies when I go camping. No matter that I'm wearing 100% DEET. Skeeters don't seem to care much.

We hit the grocery store on the way back, as today is our three-month anniversary (How cute, eh? In our 30s and counting in months) and Dave has offered to cook dinner. No girl in her right mind is going to turn down an offer like that! Two ribeyes, an onion, a lighter, some peanut butter mousse and horseradish cheese later, we're back at our tent. The first thing we do is hit the showers. Who would've thought that showering in a stall could be enjoyable? After soaping off all the stink, I re-applied more stink. DEET'd myself all over. Mmmm, fresh!

Then we just sat around the citronella and read for a few hours. The breeze and shade were so nice, I think I dozed off a bit. Dave made an amazing dinner and a couple Dixie cups of champagne and a s'more topped off the evening. Don't think I could've had it any better if I tried.

"It could be magic rain, you don't know!"

Posted by carolyn at August 20, 2005 05:03 PM

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