Word.

Jen and I went down to Matthiessen State Park about an hour and a half out into the sticks. With the first days in the 60’s in recent memory we had taken Chloe out on Saturday to one of the park district forest preserves. Chloe is a swimmer and the forest preserves don’t allow her to run off the leash or even swim off the least. Also the trails are pretty short. After the drive down south we hit Matthiessen at about 1 o’clock. I often joke about the freeway overpasses being the highest hills in Illinois. Matthiessen doesn’t necessarily impress with its positive elevation but its negative elevation.

Tiny streams have carved out amazing canyons into the soft sandstone deposits creating giant cutouts in the middle of a forest. Some of the drops are hundreds of feet straight down. Many of the trails are open and graded through the forest consisting of crushed stone while the descents into the canyon are often wood or concrete walkways that are attached to the sides of the canyon walls. After setting out to cover the 3 miles of trails in the park we headed down into the first canyon. Once into the canyon it was a little tricky leading Chloe across some of the creeks. There are man made pedestal to jump across but Chloe couldn’t really get the hand of jumping from rock to rock. So we just let her swim across and she was fine.

Well I could go on forever about the waterfalls and the giant swimming holes that Chloe had fun in but just before we headed out of the last canyon there was one more small water fall to see. It included a short crossing of a muddy section of stream that was aided by a couple of fallen tree branches. I started acrross and suddenly saw a shadow from behind. I was already doing my best to keep the mud off of my shoes when Jen let out a scream. She had just slipped in the mud at the beginning of the log. As she got her pant leg out of the mud she realized that the mud had just sucked her favorite Sketcher off of her foot. After regaining her balance and not knowing exactly where it was she lost the shoe the hunt began. I was wearing shorts so I did my best attempt as a gold digger up to my knees and elbows in no-so-warm water. Chloe during this time just wanted to play in the mud. After about 20 minutes and being out of my shoes knee deep in mud it was over… Matthiessen State Park 1, Jenifer Brandl 0. Now we have a one footed girl with a soggy sock and soaked jeans that still needed to get up out of the canyon and back to the parking lot. I gave Jen my shoes and walked out barefoot. Looking like a hillbilly with a girl in shoes 3 sizes too big dragging her feet along the rocky trail being led by a dog that could go another 3 miles we finally made it back to the car after a 40-minutes to an hour walk. All in all a good time but stay away from the muddy creek crossings.