short trip from chicago to south IL

[romerun]

I went on trip for visiting my friend in KY and camp one night in the Mammoth Cave state park. The cave is as enormous as its name plus many long histories. We went on a 3-hr lantern tour, it was absolutely dark and did not allow to take picture, I was just a little bit disappointed, I should have chosen other tours, anyway the cave is worth to visit. However, what I'm impressed is the park also offers very primitive backcountry camp sites, no bath room, no facility, hidden in jungle miles aways from visitor center which gave much sense of wilderness.

On the way back to Chicago, I tried to avoid Interstate as much possible. My guide book suggested me to try the ohio river scenic driveway located on the border of south IL and KY around Shawnee national forest -- Illinois 1,146 and 34.

I put a lot of money on my 95 neon and now it's ready to go.


The road and its view is just cool.


made a stop at elizabethtown where the oldest operating hotel in the state sits.


the town is next to ohio river


There are numerous attractions around that area, one of them is an iron furnance, I don't know what is, but it's quite interesting.



Couple of miles from elizabethtown, there is another community called


Yeah, it really has a huge black cave in rock.



oh my god.


you can cross ohio river from cave-in-rock town to KY with the ferry service


I would want to visit more places like garden of god or hike along the tower rock trail, but I had no time and the sun started to set.


I need to get back to chicago before it's completely dark because my headlight is terribly dim.


That's all my story.
Thanks for reading.

[Robert Schaller]

I enjoyed reading it. Up until a couple of years ago, I had no idea there were still river ferries running anywhere in the USA -- I thought they were part of an Americana that was long gone. I'm glad they're not! Bob