Garden of the Gods

We're back to the Garden of the Gods. It was raining off and on the last day and we happened to be driving back by the Garden of the Gods and decided to stop there again since we liked it so well. You can see fog in the first picture..it was so bad in several places that I didn't even try to take any pictures. Depending on adventurous you are I think this is an area that you might enjoy. If you're afraid of height and don't like to climb up and down steep trails and rocks then this isn't the place for you. :)

LaRue Pine Hills

The next drive we took we went to LaRue Pine Hills. I think this would be absolutely gorgeous in the fall. However, when we took the drive it was raining so I didn't get very many shots and the shots I got aren't very good in my opinion. We found out the hard way not to follow the directions listed on a brochure that we got from the national forest service. Those directions took us down the wrong road

These pictures show the remainder of the Rim Rock trail. This was a beautiful trail. If it had been wet it might have been difficult to get down into the canyon and out of it without getting wet. As you can see from the pictures the way out is where water normally flows.

Shot of the way out



Another shot of the way out.


Water slide
Walking along the cliffs
Rock formation along the Rim Rock trail

Another hike or two

In one area of Shawnee NF there was a swampy area with a board walk that took you out in the middle. There were cypress trees with others just having "knees" sticking through the water. Then we went to another place where there were a couple of big cypress trees. They are interesting trees to look at. We then went to Rim Rock trail and that is what the last 5 pictures show. You had to walk down a rocky canyon to get to the bottom. If it hadn't been so dry there would have been a few places where there would have been waterfalls. Once at the bottom the trail goes along the bottom of the cliffs. They warn you to look out for snakes as I guess there are copperheads and rattlesnakes in that are. We didn't see any. I was hoping to see some so I could take a good picture of one.

I don't know about anyone else but I've been having trouble with blogger. If you noticed you couldn't enlarge any of the picture is yesterday's blog. That wasn't because of anything I did...blogger just decided to take the link out to the larger pictures. I done everything the same way as always and didn't notice until this afternoon that you couldn't enlarge them. I hope this is not one of their "improvements".

Natural Bridge

There was a place in Shawnee National Forest called Natural Bridge and of course we wanted to see it. It really was beautiful and, like so many places, it was impossible to capture the beauty with a camera. In some places you were just too close to get a good picture to show how it really looked and you couldn't move away and get a good shot because you would be in the woods and not be able to see anything. The shots below are just my attempt to show you what, in general, that it looked liked.

Going to the Natural Bridge

Rock on the way

Actual bridge

Walking across the bridge

Trail along bottom of rocks near bridge

And this is the way we got from the bottom of the bridge to the top.

Shawnee National Forest

My wife and I recently visited Shawnee National Forest in southern IL. Our daughter had already been there so she was a big influence in picking this place. We were NOT disappointed...it was really beautiful. The pictures below are all from the "Garden of the Gods" in the national forest. If you are afraid of heights you may not like this area too well because there are some high cliffs. Of course, I always have to go as far and high as I can so I really enjoyed this area immensely.