Tag Archives: VacationSpr17

National Forest, Outdoors

Shawnee Nation Forest ~Southern Illinois

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The Rim Rock Trail in the Shawnee National Forest was nice and easy with some pretty views.

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We also saw a snake climbing a tree!

But the winner of Shawnee National Forest for us was definitely the Garden of the Gods Trail!

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It had an easy walking path, beautiful views, amazing light because of it being late in the day and…

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Climbing!

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My kids loved climbing on all the rocks.

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He takes his photo bombing seriously…

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Even little bit loves to climb.

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My kids were like “Path? What path?”

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We just had to keep an eye on what was on the other side of their climbs.

Thankfully there were plenty of rocks nowhere near the edge.

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This was a huge hit!

So glad we found this beautiful hike!

National Memorial, Parks

Lincoln Boyhood Home National Memorial ~Lincoln City, IN

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This place managed to get my twins more interested in learning about Abraham Lincoln!

I would say it was a win just for that but it was really interesting also.

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When you marry a woodworker, you get a lot of pictures of furniture…

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See?

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Another picture of a possible project.

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Where Lincoln’s boyhood cabin stood.

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The girls will ask questions all day…

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Beautiful homestead they have set up.

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This man was so nice and helpful!

He answered all of my kiddos questions and believe me there were A LOT!

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Checking out where they would sleep.

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The meat house had a piece of pig hanging in it!

The girls did not want to be in there…

ha

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They have actual animals and try to make it look like a working homestead!

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This was such a fun stop!!!!

I am glad we changed our drive a bit to include this place.

Check out more about it at their site, here.

Next stop

Shawnee National Forest

Recreation Area

Cataract Falls ~Spencer, IN

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We went to the wrong part of Lieber State Recreation Area to start with!

Which is of course a great way to start a long day of driving…

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We did get to see this turtle, a flooded road, and a pretty path though on our scenic route…

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Cataract Falls is actually over 30mins south of the main recreation area.

I have been there before, oops…

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There is a fee for getting into the Recreation Area.

It is around $5 though per car.

So not bad.

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We are learning about bridges soon so I found the different way this one was built interesting.

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The lower falls was flooded so we ended up only seeing the upper falls this time but it was impressive!

Beautiful place!