Our Starved Rock Camping Trip

My wife is not the camping type. 

Before I came along, she had never gone camping in her life, nor did she ever intend to.

She prefers pillow-top mattresses to sleeping bags, spas to campgrounds. The only kind of hiking she enjoys is through the mall to get to the sales at her favorite stores. 

So I suppose it says something about our relationship that, two years ago, I felt secure enough to bring up the idea of possibly going on a camping trip. 

I’m not exactly Mr. Outdoors myself, but I have fond memories of camping from when I was a child. There was something special about sleeping in a tent and sitting next to the campfire while my dad prepared our meals. 

I was sure that our son would enjoy it as much as I had. So, to make me happy and to give Kai a new experience, my wife agreed.

Kai had a blast on that first trip. He helped to set up the tent. He liked eating outside, and he especially liked getting to stay up late playing games in the tent and then sleeping next to Mom and Dad. 

As for my wife, well, she didn’t hate it. 

In fact, she kind of liked it. I think it was her first-ever taste of s’mores that really did it. After that, she even suggested that we go camping again. We have gone several more times.

To Starved Rock

Fall is our favorite season for camping. There are far fewer bugs than in the summer and the weather is good for sleeping in a tent with its cool, crisp nights.

We recently went to Starved Rock State Park for our latest camping adventure. Located just over two hours southwest of here, Starved Rock is an oasis of beauty in a desert of flat cornfields.  

October is a very popular time of year to go to Starved Rock.  I had to reserve a campsite months in advance. When I first told Kai that we would be going camping there, he, of course, was interested to know what our campsite number was. I only told him once, but months later, as we arrived at the campground, he remembered that we needed to go to campsite #88.

Starved Rock has miles of trails that take you to stunning bluffs and beautiful canyons. This time of year it is particularly gorgeous with the falls colors near their peak. There are also numerous waterfalls. Though they are just a trickle now, it doesn’t take much to imagine how magnificent they must be when flowing at full force in the spring. 

But Kai didn’t care about any of that.

After one hike to see the scenery, Kai said he was too tired to go on any more hikes. I thought we were back in the Smoky Mountains as we relived the frustration we faced on our summer vacation as we tried to get him to walk up one more bluff. 

But though Kai claimed that he was too tired to look at canyons and waterfalls, he somehow always had plenty of energy for a walk around the campground where we could look at the numbers of each campsite. 

One time we would walk around clockwise; the next time we would go in the opposite direction, taking note of each number along the way.  I think we put in as much mileage hiking the loop of the campground over and over as we did on all of the trails.

Other than seeing the camp numbers, Kai enjoyed sharing a tent with us, as well as with my wife’s father who joined us on this trip. But I think the novelty of camping has worn off a bit. He wasn’t as excited as he was before.

And after all the wrangling with my son about the hikes, I’ve kind of had my fill of camping for a while.

But my wife, though, enjoyed this trip as much as any of us. She’s already thinking of our next camping trip.  

I wonder if she would be up for going to a spa instead.