Shawnee National Forest
Driving to Wilmington, Day 1 | Camping & Hiking in Shawnee National Forest | November 2022
The first stop on this new adventure we’re embarking on was Wilmington, North Carolina. I know we have made it clear in the past that we aren’t big fans of the South, and South Carolina was definitely not our favorite place to live, but we were actually excited about this trip. We haven’t returned to this corner of the country since moving away in 2016, and despite not loving it, it still holds a piece of us, a part of our story, and we were excited to be reminded of all the good parts. It certainly helped that we would be visiting in the late fall, when the summer heat and humidity had passed and we could actually enjoy being outside (and miss out on the first snow of the season in Iowa). Along with that, I read “Where the Crawdads Sing” earlier this year, and just reading the author’s description of the marsh made me long to be around the palms, Spanish moss, live oak trees, and the ocean air. Yes, 6 years had been enough time away, we were ready to return to the Carolinas!
We left my parent’s house in Iowa on a stormy Friday. We were a little unsure about carrying through with our plans to camp and explore because it looked like much of our drive would be following these storms, but really didn’t have a choice but to push through. We could always sleep in the car if it was too wet, and this likely won’t be our only drive between Iowa and North Carolina, so if we had to miss visiting places on this trip, we could always see them again another day.
Day one of our drive was about 7 hours long, from Eastern Iowa to Shawnee National Forest, Illinois. As you can imagine, there wasn’t a whole lot to see along the way (at least compared to the trip in AZ/UT we had just taken!) but we got a few new counties and really enjoyed listening to the book Curtis picked out, Rabbits by Terry Miles.
As sunset approached, we finally saw the hills of Shawnee National Forest on the horizon. We drove up to what is likely the most popular part of the forest, the Garden of the Gods area off county road 17. We first thought we’d pick a campsite in the campground nearby, but were shocked to find it completely packed. We didn’t expect it to be this busy at all. Sure it was a Friday night, but it was November — the “shoulder season”, not a holiday weekend, and storms were predicted to pass through overnight. We were just so confused where all these people were coming from! We knew of a few other campgrounds and trusted that we’d find a spot somewhere else, so we decided to hurry and get to the hike before the sun went down.
For tonight’s short hike, we decided to walk the Observation Trail loop that was near the campground. Again, we saw what we thought was an absurd amount of people on the hike (the nearest population center is an hour away!), but we still enjoyed the views and the sunset. It was an easy hike with surprisingly great views for Illinois — I guess that’s why they featured it on the Illinois America the Beautiful Quarter.
After that, we drove a little further East to Pine Ridge Campground, where it was much quieter, and we had success at finding a camping spot there. Since it was supposed to be wet and windy, we decided to sleep in the car. We cleared out the back and spread out our sleeping bags, then took Charlotte for one more walk in the dark around the campground, and ate soup for dinner.
We had a few more ideas for hiking in the area, but unfortunately the wind and rain continued into the morning so we decided to save those for another day.
