Voss Vaca 2020 - Day 9 - Shawnee National Forest - Lake Glendale

Our trip is coming to an end ad we begin our journey back towards home.  On the way back, instead of doing a long driving day, we divided the trip up into two shorter driving days and added some more activities to the schedule, because, you know, we didn't do enough yet.  Like I said before, Illinois wasn't a state we planned on hitting and adding to our map this trip.  We have a Great Lakes trip planned that will start in Chicago, go around Lake Michigan and Lake Erie, hitting Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and possibly West Virginia.  But since we were going right through this National Forest, it felt like we should at least stop for a bit and take a look around.  I emailed the forest a week or so before our trip and asked about their Junior Forest Ranger program.  The woman I spoke with mailed them to me, but they didn't get here before we left.  We also found out, once we got home, that they needed additional postage, so we had to put some money in an envelope and put it back in the mail to get the books delivered.  And, if I'm totally honest, I haven't checked the mail again since right after we got back, so those books are probably sitting in the mailbox waiting, but I haven't got to them yet, lol!  She also said she was sending the things that you receive for completing the books, so we wouldn't need to worry about sending them back in, and could just give the kids their stuff once the books were completed.  I did a little looking online when we were on our way to the forest, to see if there were answers we'd need to look for while we were there.  Turns out, the books have learning information and the corresponding activities right there in the book, so you don't have to be present with the book to be able to complete it.  Which worked out great for us!  So we just enjoyed our hiking, and once I get the mail, the kids and I can go through a few pages per day and finish the book up here at home.

We stopped at two different sites in Shawnee National Forest.  When I was emailing with the woman from the park, I mentioned what highway we'd be on and the ages of our kids and asked for recommendations of where we should go and what we should visit.  She recommended Lake Glendale and Garden of the Gods.  Lake Glendale was a fun little lake area with a hiking path that went all the way around the lake.  We began hiking, but as we had already done so much of it during the week, and we were wearing down, we didn't end up making it all the way around.  We had been hiking for about a mile and a quarter when we stopped to rest.  Avery wanted to keep going, all the way around the lake.  But Michael and I knew that we had only gone about 1/3 of the way around the lake, and we didn't think the kids would be able to hold out for the rest of the hike, so we started making our way back.  This turned out to be the right call, because we were all pretty tired by the time we got back to the car.  2.5 miles in total.  There were some neat camping areas around the lake, and if we lived in the area, we'd probably go back and camp there.  There was also a swimming beach, but as we still had one more place to stop in the forest and a few more hours to drive after we left there, we decided not to stop and swim.  Here's what our first hike of the day, around Glendale Lake, looked like...

Our next stop in Shawnee National Forest was The Garden of the Gods.  Obviously, the first thing I thought of when I heard the name was of Colorado.  The area was beautiful with cliffs that you could see for miles from.  This area was actually pretty busy with other people!  We got one of the last parking spots in the area.  I was surprised that it was as busy as it was, because the day we were there was the 4th of July!  I figured everyone would have family things to do, but maybe since a lot of parades and other celebrations were canceled, they decided to go to an outdoor, open air area instead.  We tried to stay away from people as best we could.  We also had our masks on through most of our hike because they paths were narrow and since it was so busy and a fairly short path, we couldn't stay as far away from people as we would have liked.  We even got crazy and, when someone asked if they could take our picture for us, handed the phone over and let them.  Michael really enjoyed this stop on our trip.  He said that through much of our hikes all you saw to the left and right were more trees.  He really wanted to get up high enough to see over the trees and into the valleys.  We were able to do that here.  :-)  The sign at the front said the loop was a quarter mile, but when there was a fork in the path, we, inevitably, took the longer route again.  I can't remember exactly how long it was, but I believe it was somewhere between 3/4 of a mile and 1 mile that we ended up hiking at this stop.  Not too terribly long, but by this point, I was completely done, tired, and over the hiking thing.  So we left and started making our way the rest of the way through our drive to St. Louis.  (I have already added a lot of pictures to this post, so I'm going to add the Garden of the Gods pics to the next post.)

I specifically requested a high floor at our hotel in St. Louis, and paid a little more for it.  You couldn't see the Arch from our room, but you could see suburban St. Louis off in the distance.  It was still going to be a few hours until it was dark enough for fireworks, so we enjoyed the hotel.  Because of COVID, they were having people sign up for an hour long time slot in the pool, and weren't letting more than 10 people in the area at a time.  During out time slot, there were the 4 of us, plus 2 other people.  Needless to say, it was easy to distance ourselves.  The employees came in before and after each group to sanitize things.  I thought they did a really good job trying to keep everyone safe.  We also let the kids hit the vending machine, just outside the pool, because, why not?  We let them each get two snacks and they were happy little campers.  It turned out to a be a good thing we did that, because getting food delivered to our hotel on the 4th of July turned out to be a total nightmare.  I didn't think about the fact that it was the 4th, but I'm sure it leant to the problems we had.  We ordered from one restaurant and waited over an hour before finally getting our order canceled.  After all of that we found out that the restaurant was close.  Grrr!  We ordered from another restaurant and waited another hour, and finally got food, but several items were missing, including the pizza we ordered for the kids.  *facepalm*  So they ate some of my pasta and Michael's sandwich and their snacks.  What a mess.  When our food finally arrived it was late enough that the fireworks were going off like crazy in the distance.  There was nothing nearby in the city limits going off, but the hills on the horizon were going crazy for hours!  Pictures don't do it justice.  It was beautiful!  And they just kept going!  At 11pm we were closing the drapes and going to sleep, but the fireworks were still going strong.  It was a nice way to end the evening.  <3  One more day until we would get home.  (Again, already added a lot of pictures to this post, so I'm going to add hotel pics and fireworks pics to the next blog, or maybe the one after that.)