Starved Rock / Lover’s Leap & Wildcat Canyon
Starved Rock State Park | Hiking a Loop Trail to Lover’s Leap, Eagle Rock, and Wildcat Canyon | Ottawa, IL | February 2023
One of the best parts about being assigned to Ottawa is that there are a considerable amount of hiking trails within only a half hour of driving. And by Midwest standards, the hikes are actually pretty impressive. Most of these trails lie within Starved Rock State Park, which is located on the South side of the Illinois River between Ottawa and Peru/La Salle. We drove through the park back in 2016 to see Peter Toth’s Whispering Giant statue, but didn’t do any hiking — it’s just always been one of those places that we knew existed, but never made the time to explore during any of our trips between Iowa and Michigan. Now that we were in Ottawa for a month, it was time to rectify that and enjoy as much of the area as we could!
Our first visit was on a sunny Saturday morning. We parked in the large lot by the river near the visitor center and prepared for our hike. Right away we noticed how busy the park was, even for it being February — this park isn’t a hidden secret by any means, it’s the most popular state park in Illinois, free to visit, and close enough to Chicago and the Quad Cities for a day trip. After a quick stop in the visitor center and getting the lay of the land, we set off on a loop hike.
For today, our plan was to follow the trail closer to the river, passing by landmarks like Lover’s Leap and Eagle Rock, then to loop around and return on a trail on the bluff, seeing Wildcat Canyon and other lesser canyons on the way. I write this now having completed several hikes within the park, and because of that I can look back and say this loop trail that we did today was the best maintained trail that we hiked in the entire area. Part of that could just be that it was before we had a lot of rain and more of the snow melted, which caused most other trails to be super muddy, but this trail also had an extensive boardwalk and stairs in some areas which were in great condition.
The trail to Lover’s Leap and Eagle Rock was mostly on boardwalk, and it was also much less busy than the second half of our loop hike. We went up several sets of stairs to reach the top of the bluff. Lover’s Leap overlook had a nice sized observation deck, with a view of Starved Rock to the West and the lock and dam on the river. Continuing on, Eagle Rock offered more views overlooking the river and to the East. Supposedly it’s a good spot to see eagles, but we didn’t spot any today. We did see a big barge passing through the Starved Rock lock which was really cool.
After Eagle Rock, the boardwalk ended, and the trail went downhill to the river side. We followed it passed Beehive Overlook until we came to a trail junction, where we took the trail to Wildcat Canyon. This was the highlight of today’s hike – and maybe the park; there was a continuous stream of people coming and going. Within the deep, narrow canyon stood a frozen waterfall! We made our way over the ice to the falls to enjoy the view, attempting to get some pictures without all the people in them. This was exactly why we were excited to be here in February, to see the canyons and waterfalls in their winter glory!
Once we were satisfied with our time beneath the falls, we made our way up the stairs and over the canyon. While walking back to the visitor center, we passed over some smaller canyons with more little waterfalls. Altogether our walk was 3 miles long. We could have made it longer by continuing further East along the river, but Curtis wasn’t feeling great. It’s alright, we still had plenty of time to hike more trails within the park!
