Channahon State Park
Joliet, IL Week 1 | Hiking the I&M Canal Trail | Channahon State Park | November 2023
If I’m being honest, at the beginning of this fall work season, we were much more excited about Curtis’ assignment in Lancaster, PA than we were about this one in Joliet, IL. We had never been to Lancaster before, but we imagined hiking in the rolling hills of PA and visiting all new-to-us places. Joliet, on the other hand, has always just been the city we drive through on I-80 when going between Iowa and Michigan. It didn’t seem to have anything cool like Ottawa, IL did with Starved Rock State Park, so we really thought that it would be a place that we would stay for 2 weeks and then be glad to leave.
However, Lancaster didn’t quite live up to our expectations — at no fault of its own, Curtis was just assigned to the day shift with very few days off so we didn’t have any time to actually enjoy the area. We knew he would be on night shift in Illinois, and after 3 weeks of day shifts, we were hoping that it would make things better.
The result? Curtis working night shift ended up making a HUGE difference — in how we spent our time, in our outlook on the assignment, and even in our health. Even though he was still sleeping and working the same amount of hours, it felt like we had so much more time together, and more importantly, time together while it was still light outside so we could go for walks. It also helped that the plant was only 25 minutes away as opposed to close to an hour like in Pennsylvania.
As far as things to do, we obviously went in with low expectations, and because of that we were able to enjoy all the little walks in parks that we did a little more. We especially enjoyed following more of the I&M Canal Trail that we had also walked in Ottawa, and also walking around prairie preserves.
That being said, the beginning of our time here started out cold — in fact, the area had its first snow of the season on our first day there! Thankfully it slowly warmed up after a couple days so we weren’t cold the entire time. But the cold and harsh winds cut our first hike on the I&M Canal Trail short — we barely made it a tenth of a mile, though Charlotte didn’t seem to mind.
Curtis adjusted to his nights schedule on his second day at this assignment, and for the next 2 weeks our schedule looked like him going in to work around 5:45 in the evening and coming back around 7:15 the next morning. He would go right to sleep, and I would quietly entertain Charlotte through the day and do other things like read and blog while he slept for 7-8 hours. Curtis would get up by 3, and we would have 2-3 hours together to go for walks, grab dinner somewhere, and hang out before work.
During most days, we went between 2 different parks in the Joliet area that were closer to our hotel and provided easy loop walks to do with Charlotte. On our first weekend here, Curtis still had to work every night, but he was allowed to go in a few hours later than normal so we used that time to drive a little further for another walk. Our park of choice was Channahon State Park about 20 minutes West of Joliet, where we walked more of the I&M Canal Trail along the river. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we enjoyed seeing the dam and spotted a trumpeter swan out on the water as we walked. To wrap up this fun outing, we grabbed deep dish pizza from Giordanno’s — maybe the real highlight of being assigned to Joliet!
