We reserved a one bedroom cabin (with pullout couch bed) with a full kitchen through Cabins at Stone Creek ($83/night) in Makanda, IL. There are little cabins and BnB's all over the place, though. You can even stay at a few of the wineries themselves! How convenient for over indulgence ;) There are tour shuttles (groups from 2-6 people) you can book that will take you around to all the wineries that you choose but it's not really a great option for just two people as it costs $300 for the day :P That's a little more than an Uber... haha. Also, unless you have Verizon, you can expect to be completely disconnected down here. Wifi is few and far between and I didn't have service anywhere after leaving Carbondale. Fortunately, we could use Megan's phone to get us around... otherwise we'd end up needing to go old school and write out directions and use actual (non-google) maps.
On Friday we left Champaign right around 3:30 and got to Carbondale around dinner time. We ate at Quattro's which I thought had deep dish pizza for some reason. It was more of a pan style and it was pretty tasty - definitely your typical campus noms. Meal for two cost us $13, haha. We headed over to Schnucks right after dinner because our cabin isn't close to much of anything! We planned on cooking breakfast most mornings (it turned out to be every morning) and packing picnic lunches to eat on hikes. Our car was completely full... it looked like we could have been going away for weeks. We had everything from a waffle iron to two craft boxes (because the weather was threatening to rain on our hiking parade and the wineries close early!).
On Saturday we got up and made our delicious breakfast. We had a pretty hilarious itinerary planned (drinking->hiking->drinking->hiking in that order) that involved hitting up the first winery, Kite Hill, at 10am, going on a hike at Little Grand Canyon, then continuing on to Pomona and Hickory Ridge wineries and finally stopping at the Pomona Natural Bridge before heading back to clean up for dinner. Everything is a pretty far apart so it doesn't make logistical sense to try to to go back to the cabin after hiking... so we were showing up at these wineries pretty filthy from our initial hike in Little Grand Canyon... no one seemed to notice, I don't think... ha.
When you brunch like champions (yes that is a Pusheen bluetooth speaker)
Little Grand Canyon is a 3.6 mile loop in Pomona, IL. It's a little tricky in the middle section as the trail is mostly stone and some climbing through a small creek. I don't have a lot of pictures from that section as we were trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to not fall on our face... as the rock was wet from rain. Unfortunately, we couldn't complete the loop due to flooding of the trail and had to turn around despite being what had to have been more than halfway through the trail.
Little Grand Canyon first overlook
Looking good for mid-80s and like 95% humidity!
Yes that is a Pusheen selfie stick
Cliff overlook
My only picture of when the trail turned to stone!
After are hot and sweaty hike, we finally reached the car again to blast the AC and eat nearly all the food we packed (chips, pretzels and cookies lol). We incorrectly guessed that some of the wineries today would have food... none of them do. So we figured we'd just soldier through on a LOT of pretzels and cheetos. We drove to Pomona winery which is just a short distance from Little Grand Canyon. This winery specializes in anything but grapes in their wine, with the vast majority of their menu being apple wines. I found all of their wines to be very drinkable - even the ones they aged in oak barrels. I would definitely also say that Pomona had the most attentive and energetic bartender doing out tasting - he definitely LOVED his apple wine, haha. Afterwards, we headed down the road to Hickory Ridge which ended up being my favorite vineyard. I tasted my way through their entire menu before settling outside on their beautiful patio overlooking the vineyard.
The calm before the storm at Hickory Ridge
Not long after we got settled in on the patio, the storm that the forecast had been warning us about started to roll in. One portion of the patio has a pergola-like structure covered with dense vines that you can barely see light through... soon we were even getting soaked sitting under there, so we ran inside. Now, this is a teeny tiny little bar area which lots of people stranded inside from the storm which blew out the phone line, was flickering the power on and off and had now turned to hail. Luckily we had lots of wine! The name of the bartender, and also owner and winemaker, is Sylvia, and she has decorations all over her bar (including the bar itself) from her time living in Peru, Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali) and Austria. The bar itself is a one-of-a-kind piece that she had commissioned in Peru. It's a beautiful light wood with intricate carvings on three separate panels - I wish I had gotten a picture of it! The feel of the whole place was really unique yet homey and intimate.
As quickly as the storm blew in, it blew out and we were on our way to the Pomona Natural Bridge. This is a very easy and rewarding hike (more like a little stroll).
We were pretty muddy and filthy at this point, so we headed back to the cabin to clean up before dinner. I was pretty excited to have dinner at Hedman Vineyard as they have a Swedish/European restaurant with Swedish meatballs that I haven't had since Stockholm. Unfortunately the storm came back for a second round and both our umbrellas flipped inside out and we looked like crazy people stumbling in the restaurant with backwards umbrellas and hair sticking to our face (and probably smudged lipstick). Dinner did not disappoint, though! Definitely swing by here for dinner if you're in the mood for comfort food with a European flair (the menu had weinerschnitzel as well!) and some really tasty home cooked chocolate and fruit tarts for dessert. At this point, exhausted from all the hiking and wine, we collapsed in bed as soon as we got back to the cabin.
After our waffles on Sunday morning, we looked longingly outside and pondered over whether or not the weather would behave at the Shawnee National Forest which was 1.5 hours east of our cabin in Makanda. My number one to-do for this weekend was the Garden of the Gods observation trail hike... so I was pretty determined to stick it to the rude forecast calling for violent thunderstorms. Sure enough, it was beautiful all day :) thank goodness. Just a tiny bit windy - a little cooler and way less humid than Saturday! A total win in my book.
Now, the Shawnee National Forest has several places for camping, hiking and other recreational activities like horseback riding, ziplining, etc. You can stay in this area, but it isn't close to the wineries... and you know... priorities. We decided to head straight to Garden of the Gods, since it was the furthest, and stop at Bell Smith Springs and Ferne Clyff Falls/state park on the way back. Garden of the Gods is 100% worth the long drive; this has to be the most beautiful spot in all of Illinois. The rock formations and cliffs allow you to climb as far as you dare to get the best view of the stunning forested vista. The trail itself is estimated to take 45 minutes, but you could easily spend hours climbing on the rocks and taking in the views (which we did).
This was called the Devil's Smokestack
After exhausting every single rock and cliff overlook at garden of the gods, we headed to Bell Smith Springs, which I had read was nice but we honestly had no idea what to expect. The road leading up to the trail head is gravel and just a minefield of potholes... we were probably doing 5-20mph for about 3 miles. Not fun. I'd say it was worth it though! We couldn't tell if was because of all the rain or what, but this trail isn't very well marked once you get to the more densely forested area. We got pretty turned around on our way back! And one of us... I won't say who, lost her footing on a rock and ended up with a drenched shoe in the creek :P
We made our way (albeit a little precariously) to a flat rock on the creek - similar to the one in the picture below here. We had a really nice picnic packed today with deli meat, cheese, some fancy bread (that I had to cut with a butter knife, so it was a bit of a mess) and salad. After eating and feeding some bread to the fishies, we hiked a little bit further into the forest. We were starting to get pretty turned around though - and borderline actually lost if we had continued on. The trail kept forking off into several different directions and it wasn't making sense anymore. Lots of the paths were covered in mud as deep as your whole foot, so we decided it was about time we turned back (someone had a wet shoe still, haha). We had to re-navigate through the pothole minefield and we realize it was getting a little too late and we wanted to shower and make it to a couple wineries before they closed at 7, so we ended up skipping ferne clyff falls.
On our way back, we stopped in a little town called Anna for frozen yogurt and wifi (yay!). After showering and cleaning up, we drove out to Blue Sky vineyard where we did a quick tasting before heading out to Starview because we were short on time and they all close at 7 on Sundays! We had one more planned after Starview (Owl Creek) but we didn't make it there, unfortunately. They have several ciders on their menu so we for sure have to check it out next time. No complaints here though... just enjoying the good life at Starview...
Here the tasting is $5 but you get to keep the glass :) it was a lovely way to cap off the weekend
That night we ate way too much at Chili's in Carbondale (all the tasty sounding local places are closed on Sunday nights) and rolled back to our cabin to collapse in bed again. On Monday, we had a long drive ahead of us, so we tried to leave pretty early. We stopped in Effingham, which is about an hour south of Champaign, for lunch at the Firefly Grill which was DELICIOUS. Probably our best meal of the trip - I highly recommend it if you ever find yourself near Effingham. We sat on their deck and they gave us some fish food to feed to the coy fish in the pond.
Overall this was a really perfect little weekend trip. If we had some extra time, we would have liked to visit a couple more wineries (Von Jakob, Owl Creek, Alto, Rustle Hill and Orlandini are the names of the ones we didn't make it to) as well as visit Giant City State Park, Ferne Clyff State Park, and done a couple more hikes in the Shawnee National Forest area, like Jackson falls. For beer lovers, Von Jakob makes beer as well and there is a brewery just north of Carbondale called Scratch Brewery that would have been worth a visit for sure if we had some more time. But for now, I'm having a glass of wine, pretending I'm still in the moment from the picture above, while getting ready for the next adventure.
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