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Scenic Drive through East-Central Illinois
Back Roads and River Valleys
The endless prairie stretches flat and wide across east-central Illinois, interrupted only by lazy, gurgling rivers. Neat, square fields, stitched with new rows of crops, meet at fences like pieces of a patchwork quilt, creating a landscape that starts to green in the spring and deepens in color into the summer.
This 200-mile oval begins in the hardworking town of Danville, located along the Vermilion River just a few miles west of the Indiana state line, and continues to sprawling Champaign/Urbana, home of the University of Illinois. As you travel along arrow-straight two-lane roads through the Sangamon River Valley, you'll spot farm stands, where spring rains wash crates of tender asparagus. Later in summer, beds of pickup trucks weighted with corn, tomatoes and green beans tempt you to slow, stop and fill your trunk.
Many towns include bed and breakfasts, where travelers can snooze to choruses of pond frogs. After searching antiques shops in towns such as Farmer City, canoeing the Vermilion River or casting a line in Lake Clinton, you'll be ready for a good night's rest.
Lincoln lore abounds here in the Eighth Judicial Circuit, where Honest Abe once rode from county seat to county seat trying cases and winning friends. Even today, it's easy to find a passionate, but friendly, debate in establishments where blue-collar union workers shoot pool with college professors, and students eat cheeseburgers at tables beside local farmers wearing seed-corn caps. Throughout this rich land, you'll appreciate the simple sense of harmony.
