Weekends

Kids are back to school in many places of the country but weekends are still busy in campgrounds. We’re not on a schedule, so it is difficult to decide where we will be and get reservations. On Wednesday, we started looking at where we wanted to be for the weekend and found that most campgrounds/parks were already fully reserved for the weekend. So, I found a later stop that had walk-ins available. By coming in on Thursday we could get a spot for the weekend. So we are at Kickapoo State Park in Illinois.

While we love that we were able to get a spot, weekends can also be a hassle with “weekend people”. The camper beside us must have decided his music was the only one good enough to be heard by all the campers in the area as he cranked it up during the day. At night (12:30 pm) he must have decided that everyone needed to hear his opinions as he loudly talked around their campfire late into the night. Sigh.

We’re camping with only our RV and not pulling a car. That makes it more challenging in getting around to places. We’re also using our bikes more to see things within the park. We’ve visiting more distant places in the morning after we leave the campsite or stop on the way to the next park.

The unique part of Kickapoo is that it is reclaimed land from strip mining. The mining was done back in the 1920’s and 1930’s so the reclamation wasn’t a priority for the coal company but time has repaired the damage. Here are the remains of a slope mine.

There are quite a few ponds here…

  

…and lots of deer at this park. On one walk I saw 19 deer in smaller groups of two, three, or four. Lots of moms with their kids.

Kickapoo has quite a few hikes but they aren’t necessarily in great condition or marked well.

The best one is Spooky Hollow that had these faces in the trees. We were told they were put up high in the trees so no one would damage them.