Homeschool Field Trip - Southern IL

Last week I took Tyler on a field trip to Southern IL. We had a lot of fun. First stop of the day was to visit grandma. We've been really worried about her and we hadn't had a chance to see her since the funeral. She's holding up so much better than I had expected her to! I'm so proud of her...So we visited with her for a few minutes then headed on our way.

We decided to start our day at Burden Falls. He wanted to be able to climb on the rocks, so this was the perfect place. This was one of the places we always went to when I was a kid. It's too dry right now to completely appreciate how beautiful it is. When it rains the waterfall is flowing and in the bottom it feels like you've stepped into another world...We will have to make a return trip once decides to rain. Have to admit though it wasn't as pretty, the mom in me is glad he didn't have wet rocks to climb down on!

Next stop for us was Garden of the Gods...It tends to get pretty busy since it's one of the well known places to hike, but thankfully it wasn't to busy when we were there.

Tyler liked this rock cause he said it looked like a Cheeseburger...lol

Camel Rock

After Garden of the Gods we decided to go to Rim Rock then we were going to end the day at Pounds Hollow. Both places I had never been to before. So we started walking and we were making fun of these little blue signs that were stuck on the trees ever little bit because it was obvious we were on a trail...

I mean with these little suckers there's no way we're going to get lost..right?.....WRONG...lol...we got lost...we just didn't know it for a while. At one point there was 3 of these on one tree...all pointing different directions...I'm thinking that was part of the problem.

 I do have to say lost or not...Rim Rock and Pounds Hollow were my absolute favorite and we will definitely be going back...next time with a compass and drinks though...

We kept walking and walking and walking...it had said on the sign at the beginning of rim rock that it would take about an hour. It probably would have if we had followed the top part around...but nope we went down the stairs to the bottom, and got off the main trail i guess.

 But really...who could pass this up? It was definitely worth getting lost...these rocks were awesome!

 ...To be completely honest I don't know where we went wrong, but after hiking for at least 2+ hours and ended up at Pounds Hollow...Good news is we were going to go there anyways...bad news is our car was still at Rim Rock...

The trail we were on came out at the beach at Pounds Hollow...Thankfully there were other people there...and bathrooms...and a water fountain...lol...There was 2 older couples who were actually from Evansville too and thankfully they gave us a ride back to our car...which is great because we were debating which would be the better route to walk back the way we came and risk getting lost again and possibly end up stuck out there in the dark, or try to follow the main road...riding with strangers sounded like the better option...lol..don't judge...you'd have done it too :0)

All in all we had a really great day, the weather was perfect, and the scenery beautiful...best part with us getting lost I  think I got in my exercise in for the whole month! :0)