Starved Rock State Park: St. Louis Canyon Hike

Today we started the Grunwald Spring Roadtrip of 2018. We left Galesville and headed south into Illinois. By the time we reached the exit for Utica, we needed to get gas. We found we all wanted to stretch our legs a bit also, and so we made an impromptu trip to nearby Starved Rock State Park.

We opted to hike to St. Louis Canyon. It was a fitting destination since we will be headed to St. Louis in a few days. We grabbed a map and started our hike in a low, wet area. Not wanting to get our feet too wet we decided to turn around and opted instead to hike back towards the visitor center. We hiked past the building and found another trail that led to St. Louis Canyon,

this one beginning at a set of stairs that led up to a ridge top.

From the top of the ridge we could see the park's namesake: Starved Rock.

Sierra took a photo of Noelle and I there

and then we started off past the lodge building. There was an Easter bunny ice sculpture outside that Sierra seemed to get a kick out of.

After passing the lodge, we crossed over a road on a pedestrian bridge and headed into the woods. Soon enough we caught a glimpse of our first canyon, Aurora Canyon. The trail passed close the the canyon edge, but was protected with a fence.

Then we came to our second canyon, Sac Canyon,

with a small stream of water making its way down a little waterfall. Beyond Sac Canyon is a third canyon, called Kickapoo. It was difficult to get a good view of Kickapoo Canyon. Then the trail entered into a very flat, plateau-like area. There were views every now and then out over the Illinois River.

Soon we found ourselves walking a section of boardwalk.

After the section of boardwalk, the trail makes its way down some stairs, past some colorful orange sandstone

and along a narrow ridge.

Then we entered into St. Louis Canyon.

We saw our first wildflowers of the spring in the canyon!

The deeper we got into St. Louis canyon, the more impressive it looked.
It ends abruptly at a tall waterfall in the box.

There are a few rock shelter caves in the box canyon.

We spent about 20 minutes admiring the view and exploring,

before we started to retrace our steps back to the start of our walk. On the way back, I noticed that there was a trail that led into Aurora Canyon, and so we took the short spur trail into it.

It ended at a multi-tier waterfall where we posed for a photo.

We then walked a short distance along the road to avoid the swampy area we had encountered earlier.