Saturday April 23rd, 2022
We were graced with a gorgeous morning as we drove to the trail head in Vienna Illinois. From here, the tunnel was 9.5 miles to the north, perfect. A large portion of this trail is in the Shawnee National Forest which is marked with sandstone cliffs and formations. These were very evident along the trail. The tunnel runs 800 feet through shale and sandstone and is quite dark. I turned the flashlight on my phone on so I could at least have a bit of visibility. It was very cool to say the least. 5 stars!
We finished the ride and headed north, northeast towards our last night on the road. When we have a destination picked out, I put it on Mikes phone and it comes up on apple car play in the van. I will also have the route on my phone to cross check and double check. I found a state forest campground west of Indianapolis. That is what I put in my phone. Unfortunately, I only put the name of the state forest into Mikes phone leaving out the very important word, campground. . As can sometimes happen on the road, we had a failure to communicate and ended up on some road with nothing on it and google telling us we had reached our destination (the state forest, lots of trees) but there was no campground to be seen. Arggggg! I kept telling myself this was all going to work out. Sure enough, up the road a bit was the Lieber State Recreation Area. This had a campground with 120 sites with water and electric that was completely full. But, to our huge relief, they also had 120 tent sites with availability that would work perfect for the van. We found a spot, had a couple glasses of wine and dinner and then got the bikes out for an evening ride to check out the park. It was a great way to finish a great day, although a bit bumpy at the end.
We head home to Grand Ledge tomorrow. It has been a great trip. I am very thankful for our van and all that it allows us to do.