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...

Dead Horse Point "Cooking" at the campsite Based on tips from a fellow RV doctor mom, we chose to stay at Dead Horse State Park as a home base to explore Canylonds National Park. Canyonlands does have a campground in the park but it is first come first served only and until we are comfortable with dispersed camping if we find a desired campsite full, we feel most comfortable with reserved sites. We stayed at the Kayenta Campground at Dead Horse and it was lovely. The kids greatly enjoyed the picnic area and the cabinets which allowed them to take their pretend kitchen game to the next level.  Dead Horse Point Dead Horse Point is incredible. Absolutely incredible. No pictures do it justice. I went by myself at sunset the first night and wow. It was way more impressive to me than the Grand Canyon. I ran around enjoying it from every angle, in some ways made all the more sweet by the fact that I knew I had to soak it all in quickly to get back to help with bedtime. We breakfaste...

  Because of competing priorities, we only had one day allotted for Canyonlands National Park. This obviously wasn't enough to do substantial exploring but was actually very reasonable for a superficial taste of the Island in the Sky district. Canyonlands National Park is divided into multiple districts with Island of the Sky being the most accessible and visited. The Needles and the Maze are a couple other districts that we didn't even attempt to visit given their distance from our Dead Horse State Park home base and our desire to stick to shorter "get a taste of the place" hikes on this particular trip.  Grand View Point We played the whole day by ear partially based around when O (3) took his nap. While he was happily napping we listed to Gypsy Guides (once again highly recommend this GPS based app) and stopped at scenic points and while he was up we did short hikes. First we went to Grand View Point Overlook and Zooey and I explored while Ollie slept (we then swap...