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Hiking in the Garden of the Gods
Garden of the Gods, Illinois
Voices slow to soft drawls, and old Ohio River towns snooze in the sun along twisting, wooded back roads in the Illinois Ozarks. Great ice sheets that smoothed the prairies stopped short of the brawny hills and rocky outcroppings in this region of southern Illinois just across the river from Kentucky.
Nearly everybody who visits this area heads for the towering rock formations at Garden of the Gods, a 3,300-acre national recreation area north of a stop in the road called Karber's Ridge. An easy flagstone path takes you to a scene that's some 320 million years old.
You can view appropriately named Camel Rock and Devil's Smokestack from the path. Their smooth, timeworn surfaces rise hundreds of feet above Shawnee National Forest. It's easy to find solitude on wilderness trails that pierce the woods and meadows.
In the early 1800s, river pirates waited in a huge limestone cavern to prey on settlers floating down the Ohio a few miles southeast of Garden of the Gods. Today at Cave-in-Rock State Park, visitors can explore the cool, eerie recesses of the big cavern just north of the sleepy town that shares its name. You may find yourself glancing over your shoulder to be sure a scoundrel from long ago doesn't lurk nearby.
30 miles east of I-57, 45 miles southwest of Evansville, Indiana
Garden of the Gods (800/699-6637).
Southernmost Illinois Tourism (800/248-4373).
Saline County Chamber of Commerce
Cave-In-Rock State Park (618/289-4325)
Shawnee National Forest (800/699-6637).
