Living with Boys: Labor Day

We had a fantastic Labor Day. The weather has finally cooled off after a storm on Saturday afternoon. We actually wore our jackets most of the day! I love fall!!

We decided to go over to Starved Rock State Park, about an hour from here. We figured it would be busy since it was a holiday weekend and gorgeous. But were unprepared for how busy it actually was. Starved Rock is right on a river, complete with locks and dam which you can see in the pic below. It is not our idea of a state park though! The huge paved parking lot tipped us off. People streaming towards the visitors center was another tip off. We were at a tourist spot. We took the short walk up a bunch of stairs to the top of starved rock, which over looks the river. The story is some Indians retreated up there after being chased by some "bad" indians. They were trapped and ended up dying of starvation. There was a pretty view as long as you could see around the hoardes of people. Yuck!

There were other trails but we decided to not even try them.

Luckily a FB friend had mentioned they were going there this weekend and some one had suggested a nearby, less popular park. We high-tailed it out of a now full parking lot and drove 5 minutes in the other direction. We lucked into a parking spot in a much smaller, more state park like lot at Mathieson State Park. We had our lunch here. We had to sit on our blanket rather than a table so we could be in the sun! The shade was cold.

I'm hopoing we can photoshop the glares out of this pic...

The boys have discovered they can play with the camera so some of these shots are taken by them.

After lunch we hiked a trail. It goes down a bunch of steps and you end up overlooking a very deep canyon. The trail goes along the top and then there is a stairway down. You make your way along the creek and end up at a dead end where I"m sure there's a waterfall in the spring. Despite being a lot of people (and dogs) around, it was really neat.