The Pre-Eclipse Garden of the Gods

Let me continue writing about my trip to the Shawnee National Forest to see the eclipse. One of the nicer geologic features at Shawnee is The Garden of the Gods, a sandstone rock formation.

I went there the day before the eclipse and they shut down the place around me.

The Garden of the Gods Recreation Area, which is a high area containing sandstone bluffs, is surrounded by the Garden of the Gods Wilderness Area, where vehicles are not allowed. It also has a backpacking parking lot, since a lot of backpackers use the area. Because of the eclipse, backpackers were coming out of the woodwork to go into the woodlands. In addition, since officially people are allowed to do “primitive” camping (i.e., without the benefit of toilets) in a National Forest, a lot of people were coming in to try to do that at the Garden of the Gods.

It was kind of crowded.

It certainly would have been a cool place to view the eclipse. One of the things others told me was that from a high place you can see the moon’s shadow approaching, and the lighted horizon all around. On the other hand, totality would be shorter (2 minutes 11.5 seconds versus 2 minutes 40.1 seconds).

Here’s the official map of the area, which I have modified to show the main road leading to the Garden of the Gods (in black) and the entrance road (in brown).

Garden of the Gods Official Map

[Click for the large version.]

Now, I was there just to do some hiking and enjoy the place, but there were a lot of people trying to get set up for the night. Withing about half a mile of the parking lot there were cars parked along the side of the entrance road, sparsely at first, and getting denser and denser as I progressed. I was figuring I’d have to do the same, but thought I’d head all the way in and maybe get lucky.

I got lucky. In the parking lot itself somebody must have just left, and I grabbed their spot.

Of course, the first thing I had to do was hit the Observation Trail, which has most of the cool rock formations. Here’s a picture from mid-hike that gives you a good look at the kinds of formations there and the surrounding wilderness.

Camel Rock

That particular formation in the middle is called (surprise!) Camel Rock.

It is interesting to compare these rocks to Hocking Hills. Both are sandstones of slightly more than 300 million years old formed in shallow seas. The Blackhand Sandstone of Hocking Hills is said to be between 328 and 350 million years old. The Pounds Sandstone that makes up the Garden of the Gods is said to be 320 million years old. But if you’ve been to both places, you’ll also notice differences. At Hocking Hills the sandstone is exposed on the walls of gorges. Here, its part of a dome that rises above the surrounding area. At Hocking Hills, it erodes fairly flatly; here, most formations are pretty rounded.

Usually in these hiking blog posts there are relatively few pictures of me. That’s because I’m usually in the middle of nowhere and have to go through the hassle of setting up my tripod and the timer on my camera. But here there were people everywhere, so I was able to ask a fair number of them to take my picture. So, here I am early on along the Observation Trail.

Near the Beginning

Let me say right up front that it was really hot and humid during my entire stay in southern Illinois. The daily high was always right around 90° and the daily low never went below 70°. I don’t know how humid it was, but every morning any clothing I’d left out, even inside my tent, was damp, almost soggy.

So when hiking I wasn’t about to wear any more that I really had to. I heard one kid make mention of Tarzan. (The shorts, the bare feet, or both? I have no idea.) I also overheard somebody make a comment about “nature boy”. So be it. (I will say that, after a while, I did see some other men, albeit younger, having taken their shirts off. There’s something about peer pressure . . .)

Here’s another shot of me taken about the same time but in a different direction.

First Overlook

By the way, that big black lump on my belly is my camera case, hung on the belt of my fanny pack. When I used to put my camera into my fanny pack, I never went through the bother of taking it out and taking pictures. So it’s better to look a little odd but have access to the camera. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s adding odd on top of odd on top of odd! But it works and we should all care a bit less about what others think about us.)

This next picture shoots just a bit to the left of the previous one (in fact, you ought to be able to recognize that same rock with the horizontal crease) for a better view of the surroundings.

Looking Over

These rocks were delightful to walk on barefooted. They had a wonderful texture and when climbing on them I got immediate feedback about just what sort of grip I was getting. That’s one of the things going barefoot is all about.

Continuing around the Observation Trail, I was able to take a picture looking back at where the previous pictures were taken. Look again for that rock with the horizontal crease in the high middle.

Where I Was

Here are some more rocks and scenery.

More Rocks

After I took the picture, I too went up onto them.

This picture gives a better feel for what the bluffs/cliffs look like.

Bluffing

Again, they have a much rounder erosion pattern than Hocking Hills.

After finishing the Observation Trail (something less than half a mile long), I wanted to take a much longer hike, so I headed out into the Wilderness. But with a map. I’d chosen about a 5 mile hike.

Hike Route

On that map, I’ve marked my route in blue, starting from the parking lot. The 001E trail, which I took, was for hikers only, while the other one (which is actually 001A) also allows horses.

The trail started out with a fair bit of gravel (ugh) but quickly turned to a very nice surface for barefoot hiking.

West Bluff Trail

As you might guess from looking at the topography on the map, this 001E trail also had nice rock formations all along it. Here I am in front of one of the more interesting rocks.

Liesegang Ring

There is nothing like this in Hocking Hills.

Those are called Liesegang rings. It’s hard to figure out how those were formed in shallow seas, but according Wayne T. Frankie’s Guide to the Geology of the Garden of the Gods Recreation Area, Shawnee National Forest, Saline, Gallatin, Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois:

For this Liesegang banding phenomenon to occur, a fluid containing a salt must be introduced into a colloidal suspension within a porous medium (such as this coarse sandstone). During mixing of the fluid and the colloid, when the dissolved salt reaches a supersaturated level, precipitation occurs at regular intervals, resulting in the banding just described.

While I was there, I was talking to a man when I noticed his teenage (16?) son on top of a nearby rock, barefooted. We got to talking and the son was one of those who hated shoes. (He had shoes with him but had taken them off to climb the rock.) But we talked quite a bit about going barefooted, and the father also learned from me how it really helps my back and knees. At which point he started thinking maybe he should go barefooted more often, too. It did sound like he’d give his son less grief about it, regardless.

When I got to the point on the map where I’ve put the red arrow, I encountered a couple of different groups who didn’t know where they were. Now, there were Forest Service rangers in the parking lot handing out maps (they sure didn’t want lost people) but somehow these people didn’t have one. (Or some did, but still couldn’t figure out where they were or how to get back to where they came from.) They didn’t even know which way north was.

So I helped them. It was a bit before noon and local sun noon would be around 1:00pm, so my shadow had to be pointing just a bit west of north. So I pointed out north. (And then another hiker who’d just arrived and had a compass said, “Hey, that’s just what my compass says!”) Anyways, I got out my map, oriented everybody who needed it, and helped them choose which way they wanted to take.

You might have noticed that one of the trails I was on is the River-to-River Trail. This is the part of southern Illinois that coming to a point where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers meet. That trail goes across the state as it narrows. There are a lot of nice trails in this part of Illinois with very good recreational opportunities. In addition to the east-west River-to-River Trail there’s a long north-south trail, the Tunnel Hill Trail. I’d seen a portion of that trail two days before.

After I ended my northern counterclockwise loop, I was down near the backpacking parking lot and trailhead, so I took the southern loop down to Indian Point. The trail was just littered with backpackers setting up alongside the trail.

Here I am on Indian Point.

Overlooking Indian Point

More cool rocks, more cool scenery (more nice people to take my picture).

To get there, I’d taken the direct route; I took the eastern loop to get back.

There were a lot of recess caves along that southern-facing bluff. And some people had gotten some really, really nice camping spots.

Recess Cave Camping

That highlights another difference from Hocking Hills. Hocking Hills recess caves (like Ash Cave or Cedar Falls or Parrish Rocks or Vulture Cave) are below the water table and have flowing water or drips. So they are really too damp to set up a campsite. But the recess caves at Garden of the Gods are in a high area and quite dry. Thus, nice campsites.

At the end of the loop, back at the backpackers trailhead, I had to cross the entrance road. It was a mess. There was a ranger there controlling traffic, which only seemed to be one way because there were so many cars parked on both sides of the road (and some did it better than others). By the time I made it to the parking lot, I was surprised to find it fairly empty.

But I found out why as I exited the park—they’d closed the entrance road and were only letting people out. Here’s the story that I shared yesterday: Shawnee National Forest areas temporarily close due to overcrowding. Officials had decided that the road was just too dangerous down to only one lane.

I was really glad that I was set up at Lake Glendale and wouldn’t have to do any driving the next day, the day of the eclipse. (My campground neighbors across the road—they’d driven down from Ontario—were planning on driving to Garden of the Gods to view the eclipse there. I hope they were able to get in. I did give them my map and we discussed other places they could park outside Garden of the Gods and then hike in.)

On my drive home, though, I drove by the Ohio River, in the town of Golconda. I couldn’t see the River, though, because of the levees. In fact, the highway I was on drove though the levees and had gates that could be closed when there was high water. But I took a short detour into town and drove up the levee (“Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry”) to take a look. Here’s that picture:

The Ohio River at Golconda

That’s about as wide as the Ohio gets; it’s only about 77 miles from joining the Mississippi.

From there it was back to my campsite, where I watched the Great Eclipse the next day.