We only had a weekend to getaway over our respective Spring Breaks, and didn’t want to drive too far, so I decided to figure out a trip that would take us to do some interesting hiking. I also wanted to stay somewhere reasonably interesting, which ended up being a bit of a challenge. We settled on visiting the Garden of the Gods (in Illinois, not Colorado) since we had heard wonderful things about it and knew a few people who had gone. I couldn’t find much information about what to do online, so I hope this post will be helpful to you if you plan a trip!
So the Garden of the Gods is a Wilderness area in the Shawnee National Forest, and honestly, we barely tapped the surface, but I’ll tell you what we did. But first, let me tell you where we stayed!
I had looked at some cabins closer to the Garden of the Gods, but they were either too expensive or already booked up. I realized that there were a few options in areas overlooking the nearby Ohio River though, and settled on a place with a jacuzzi and porch overlooking the river. That location has several varying options, and they are all part of the same place. (It is a former Catholic Retreat called San Damiano.)
It was about a 3 hour drive for us, which is about right for a weekend. We left around lunch on Friday and arrived mid-afternoon. Check in was easy (key in our room), and we immediately found that yes, the view was as advertised.
The place itself was…quiet and isolated. There were a few other cars there and we saw a couple out walking their dog, but otherwise it looked run down and abandoned (there was a large building that used to be perhaps a conference center, which looked simply closed during our visit, but maybe closed for good.) We unpacked the car and then took a walk, following a sign that said “to the Ohio River 1/3 mile”. Indeed! It was a trail that went around the bluffs, really a road, and then we were closer to the river level. We walked for about a mile, and kept thinking maybe somehow it would circle back around, but it didn’t, so finally we reached what seemed to be “the end” and turned back. We also explored a bit around the building we were staying as well, as there were some benches, statues, etc. to walk around and look at.
We got back up to our room and went out on the porch for “Happy Hour” of cheese/crackers. The porch wasn’t entirely private, but we had our own space. The room we had was part of a building with four rooms, but only the one on the opposite end was occupied. There was a nearby building that had a couple on the end as well, and at this time everybody seemed to be out enjoying the view.
It did get a little chilly however, so we went inside and turned on the gas fireplace and started cooking dinner. We had what we needed to cook, but nothing extra! There were no wine glasses either, which I figured just meant that the place was tired of people breaking them, since they did have a wine bottle opener.
At one point, we saw our first barge!
It was exciting, because we could see the barge from afar, coming around the bend, but then it slowly got closer and closer.
We went to bed early, after watching a few shows on Netflix: there was a tv but no internet, so I assume just a few local channels. Do bring your own downloaded entertainment!
Oh, and barges make more noise than you might think. After dark, we would hear them coming up and down the river.
The next morning we enjoyed coffee and watched the river more. It was a bit chilly and rainy so we mostly watched from inside.
Our next plan was to visit the Garden of the Gods. We did two hikes there, which I highly recommend. We started with the Observation Loop, which is a must do hike in the area. It’s short and quite easy: there’s a mostly stone path to follow, and you can go off path and climb more rocks, or you can just stay on the path.
After we hiked the Observation Trail, we drove to the Indian Point Trailhead. It was a smaller parking lot, but was pretty crowded. This hike was around 2 miles, and was very enjoyable. We went counterclockwise. It was a little muddy starting out, but wasn’t bad overall.
The views at what I assume were Indian Point were very nice.
And then the trail goes by a bunch of rock formations, some with crevices and cave-like features that likely more adventurous people than me crawl all over. We really enjoyed this hike, and also the solitude of it. It was easy to follow and was well marked, though I’d downloaded it on Alltrails as well.
After that, we knew there was more to do at the Garden of the Gods, but nothing that we really felt like we knew enough about. So, if you have been and have recommendations for next time, please tell me! It looked like there were some longer hikes, but all the All trails reviews mentioned horses and being poorly marked…and we just didn’t want to deal with it. So do the Observation Trail and the Indian Point Trail, and then drive to Rim Rock Trail, which is about 15 minutes away, and will be awesome…when they fix the stairs.
We enjoyed about a 1 mile hike around the Rim Rocks Trail, but couldn’t do what looked to be the highlight of the Trail, going down those stairs into the rock formations down below! I would highly recommend all three of these trails, and none of them were particularly difficult–the Indian Point Trail was rocky and you’ll want good shoes for all of them.
After that, we decided to visit the nearby towns. We started with Golconda, which was technically the mailing address of our retreat. It was a little tiny town on the Ohio River, with a history of being a place where the Trail of Tears went by. The Wikipedia page tells the story, of a ferry man who refused to help the Indians cross the river, and made them wait in a cave and many of them died there. The town itself was quite run down (though to be fair, so are parts of my city) but the river was nice: we drove up on the levee and went down as far as we could. Oh, I considered renting an airbnb on the levee here with a lovely porch to watch the river, but I’m glad I chose the one I did, with the jacuzzi, and being further from town. There wasn’t much to do there, though there was maybe one little restaurant.
We did stop by to look at the old lock and dam site.
We also visited two other nearby towns, named Rosiclaire and Elizabethtown. We had thought if we saw a fun looking restaurant we might have dinner in town, but didn’t see anything that appealed. (We also get a little uncomfortable with all the political signs in these areas, to be honest, and that makes me not want to spend any more money, as well as concerns over health safety.)
So, we headed back to be on barge watch! And by that I mean, more cheese and crackers, and the sun even came out for a bit.
And then we cooked dinner and relaxed.
One interesting thing that happened in the early morning was that we heard a barge blowing its horn, over and over. I was tired and chilly and didn’t get out of bed, but I chatted with the neighbor later and she said it was a foghorn–that the fog covered the entire river and there were two barges passing one another blowing their foghorns at one another. I should have gotten up!
Anyway, we took our time getting going in the morning, but left around 11 am. On our way out we stopped by the outskirts of the Retreat center to do a short walk in the woods and visit a giant statue.
The walk took us to an old cemetery, a pet cemetery (it was sweet but if you read Stephen King you will get shivers reading that phrase) and what looked like it used to be a place with statues but was now just old wooden posts and cement block with broken bits. I think it was a place to visit the Stations of the Cross and I don’t know if it was taken away or vandalized, or what, but it wasn’t anything anymore. We did see a few deer as well.
I hope you get a chance to visit the Garden of the Gods sometime, or visit the Ohio River. We definitely enjoyed our stay and would go back again, especially to hike the Rim Rock Trail with the stairs fixed and maybe another longer trail in the Garden of the Gods area.
It was an easy drive home, less than 3 hours and the cats were happy to see us.