State Parks

When I was a kid, a lot of our trips were to state park in the region.  We stayed in the lodges a lot; I've always thought they were more fun than regular hotels in hindsight, because the lounges often had games and other people hanging out, and the food was generally good.  Plus you didn't have to drive anywhere from the lodge to get to what you came to see.

One of the constant themes in most of our trips was hiking; we walked a lot of trails, some of them dry, some of them in creeks.  If the trip wasn't to somewhere with hiking, it was probably a historical site.  We rarely went anywhere that was more than an eight-hour drive, but within that radius we did quite a few trips.

Some of locations:

• Cave-in-Rock - one of our occasional day-trips in the summer, the cave at Cave-in-Rock isn't as cave-y as some of the others; you can generally always see the way back out.  The cave has been used in movies a couple times; one of the more interesting non-natural features there is the historical graffiti.
• Wyandotte - located near Corydon (Indiana's first state capitol), the Wyandotte caves are more serious caves - underground, windy passages, stalagmites and stalactites, the whole works.  We also went to Corydon during that trip.
• The Hermitage - Andrew Jackson's residence in Tennessee; we went there at least twice.
• Clifty Falls - located in Indiana near Louisville; I believe this was also the trip when we went to the Churchill Downs museum.  Normally Clifty Falls is a trip to see amazing waterfalls along a creek; we happened to go while there was a pretty serious drought in effect.  So while we didn't get to see much in the way of waterfalls, we did at least get to see the neat rock formations that are normally underwater.
• Turkey Run - I think we went to Turkey Run a couple times.  They had an arcade in the basement of the lodge with nickel pinball machines.  The trails there ran concurrent to the creek.
• Spring Mill - the only place I've ever seen a muskrat, Spring Mill is near Bloomington.  In addition to the mill, we also went to the Gus Grissom memorial in the area.
• Brown County - Brown County is famous for its foliage and covered bridges.  I'm pretty sure we probably saw a covered bridge?  Most of what I remember about the trip was finding the reprint of a German-English primer in one of the gift shops.
• The Dunes - the Dunes are a national park, up by Chicago.  The water was cold when we went, and I think it was the only time I ever wore the sundress I made for 4H.
• Garden of the Gods - this ends up in the news fairly often because people fall off the cliffs there surprisingly often.  We never got that close to the edge.  Since most of northern Illinois and Indiana are glacier-smooshed flat, the views there are quite different from what you get in a lot of the rest of either state.
• Harmonie - being the state park we went to most often (to go swimming), I've been there quite a lot.  (The day after we got married, we went to our cousins' high school graduation party there.)  My deer spotting skills were honed there.  The concession stand at the pool had butter pecan ice cream and Goldrush bars.
• Angel Mounds - the site of a Native American settlement hundreds of years ago, Angel Mounds was farmed by relatives of my cousins' family during the 19th century before the significance of the mounds was known, and the state purchased the land for preservation.  It was a bit of a drive, and I associate butter cookies with the trip.  (The shortbread cookies shaped like flowers with holes in the middle... those ones.)

We've hit a few parks in New York since I moved up here, but they don't have the same kind of convenient accommodations (lodges) that most of the ones in Indiana had, and we're not really into camping.  I miss Indiana's lodges!