Off Like a Herd of Turtles: Family Travel Blog

Garden of the Gods I'm not sure that we would have discovered the beauty of Shawnee National Forest were it not for COVID. As we searched for areas within a day's drive of our home in Northern Illinois, a national forest only 6 hours away seemed perfect! And indeed it was. We've since taken 2 trips down to Shawnee- one in the Fall (October 2020) and one in the spring (April 2021). Here are my tips to help you have a great trip to Illinois' only national forest!  Garden of the Gods First of all the Shawnee region is HUGE. It expands across the entire southern portion of Illinois between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. We've only hit the tip of the iceberg of fun areas to explore around Shawnee. I'd highly recommend getting a good map because you could easily underestimate the space between locations. ( https://southernmostillinois.com is a good place to start). You can also upload the MUVMs if you are an Avenza user. The visitors' centers were closed due to...

This. This was what our trip was about. I've been so lucky to get out to Yellowstone numerous times in my life in summer, winter and spring and the Tetons were always added on as an afterthought. But the Tetons. The Tetons deserve their own time and that's what we set out to do in 2020. This year we spent just two days near Yellowstone then we headed for 5 glorious nights in Grand Teton National Park. It was perfect for any year and absolutely perfect for COVID. Our focus in the Tetons this year was two fold- bike and paddle. We brought 6 bikes and 2 boats all the way from Illinois and we intended to use them. And we did. So much activity in the outdoors requires prep work. Loading bikes, unloading bikes. Loading boats, unloading boats. Packing accoutrement for biking and paddling. Training kids to stay safely entertained during the loading, unloading. Training kids to put on the aforementioned accoutrement:) But it is SO SO worth it. The first couple nights we stayed at Headw...