Starved Rock State Park

If you hike this park, get used to stairs, lots and lots of stairs. Everywhere you want to go involves hiking up or down the bluff.

Most of the riverbeds looked like this, dry with just a trickle of water. The thunderstorms every afternoon helped but I look forward to coming back during the spring when all the canyons have waterfalls.

The park is on the south bank of the Illinois River. This is Eagle Cliff Overlook.

In addition to all there stairs, there are lots of boardwalks and bridges. It does make it nice to hike around and avoid the mud.

The view from the top of Starved Rock.

One warning to pay attention to, there are steep cliffs everywhere you hike.

Aurora Canyon.

Starved Rock State Park - St Louis Canyon

This was one of my favorite canyons, probably because it was the easiest to hike into and out of. With the others you have to hike up and down the bluff at least once. For St Louis you drive in off the main road and park almost at the bottom of the canyon so the hike in is pretty flat.

The entire hike in you're deep in the woods and all you notice is the trees, then suddenly you round a corner and realize there are vertical cliff walls on both sides of you.

Starved Rock State Park - Wildcat Canyon

It took me 2 days to find how to hike into this canyon. The bluff trail takes you over a bridge at the top of the canyon, but it wasn't until the second day I found the trail that winds into the bottom of the canyon.

Starved Rock State Park - LaSalle Canyon

I spent several days hiking the trails and canyons in this park in northern Illinois, it's an hour or so southwest of Chicago. It's very beautiful, but it so hot and humid while I was there. We got thunderstorms every afternoon, but on the plus side, there were waterfalls in many of the canyons from all the rain.

These are the falls in LaSalle Canyon. It was a zoo on Sunday with lots of kids standing under them like a shower. I had to come back the next day to get some shots with no people in them.

You can't believe how steep and deep most of the canyons were. Sometimes you'd be walking in the woods and not even realize how deep into a canyon you were.

A view I don't usually get to shoot, from behind the waterfalls.

The view from the falls looking down the canyon.

Waterford Hills part 2

Somehow during lunch I took a wrong turn and ended up on the track following the pace car.

They were supposed to be slow "parade" laps but after the first everyone was sliding around every corner and running flat out on the back straight.

I know, 80 mph on the back straight, driving with one hand and taking a self photo with the other hand was not real smart, but wow was it fun.

Working on my panning skills, it's hard to move exactly as fast as the car so it's in focus while everything else is blurry.

This guy was risking it all with a casual stroll across the track during a race. The corner workers didn't have a "turkey on the track" flag so they threw the yellow flag instead, and he took off before the cars got to this corner.

 

They were also having a car show the day I was there, lots of nice cars.

After lunch it was back to racing.

Notice this Neon going through the corner, his left rear tired is unweighted enough that it's off the track and stopped.

The joys of victory!

The agony of defeat, or at least a blown motor.

Waterford is family friendly, bring the kids and the dog.

Taking corner one a little wide, ok, maybe really wide.

Not sure why his lights are on, it was the middle of the day, probably not as aerodynamic either.