Starved Rock

Starved Rock is an Illinois State Park. All I really know about it is that my parent's used to camp there in the 70s. Anyway, Mike and I decided to spend a day at Starved Rock, hiking, picnicking, and enjoying NATURE. It was not exactly what we expected. At first, there were paved walkways and endless amounts of stairs, not exactly what you think of when you think State Park, but eventually the paved trails led to less busy wooded trails and we felt like we were more in the wilderness.

Starved Rock. We didn't actually climb up, although we could've followed the line up like a roller coaster. We intended on hitting it up on the way back from our hike but Olive was beat.

We climbed up into the hillside, stopped at Lover's Leap (doesn't sound ominous at all) then climbed up to Eagle Point.

We started down the stairs to follow the Lake Trail and Olive stopped to take a breather. Mind you we had only been hiking for like 20 minutes but there were a lot stairs for her (and my) little legs.

Olive was so tired after the stairs that she decided to stretch out right on the trail to cool her belly. After this, we decided to let her illegally wade in the river to keep her from overheating.

Here's us in all our sweaty, bug sprayed glory.

Far and away my favorite place on the trail were these rock formations. They towered above us, and you literally felt like you were in another world.

Following the rock formations we headed way up to the Bluff Trail and traveled through Lone Tree Canyon. Pretty, though not as sexy as "Asswood Canyon"

We let Olive cool off one more time. Clearly we choose the cleanest water we could find.

After her muddy romp, Mike helped Olive out for a bit. I know you're thinking, "why would you carry a dog", but there were some treacherous grated metal steps, that Olive seriously refused to walk on. Also Boston Terriers tend to overheat very easily and this was at the end of our long hike (although, not as long as we thought). Finally, look at her face, she's clearly beat. So shut up, it's not like she's in a stroller.