Giant City State Park
Makanda, Illinois
Giant City State Park has a lovely equestrian campground. Campsites have electricity. Not all of the them have access to water. We ended up selecting a campsite down from the one I had reserved to get a campsite with access to a working water faucet. There were only two or three other campers in the entire campground during our stay. The RV dump is in the main campground about two miles away. There is a bath/shower house, but it is not in the best condition.
There are tie lines behind each campsite, but we opted to put up our portable corrals. With temperatures approaching 90 degrees and humidity at around 60%, the flies and biting gnats were awful. We outfitted the horses in fly masks, fly sheets, and shoofly leggings to protect them from the annoying insects.
There are 12 miles of trails in the park. The trails are well marked and maintained and they weren’t that muddy. I was a little leery of getting back in the saddle after the last ride where my horse bucked me off, but steeled myself. No bucking this ride, but as we rode through the pasture sections, I could sense my horse getting amped up. It was only a matter of time when he would choose to bolt. I managed to keep him under control the entire ride and stayed safe, but it was not a relaxing ride for me.
It was a shame because the forest is beautiful and I would have enjoyed myself a lot more if I wasn’t gripping the reins and paying attention to whatever signals my horse wanted to send me.
With the heat, we really didn’t feel like riding too much. So, on Wednesday morning we opted to take a yoga class in the nearby town of Makanda. This picture is pretty much the entire town. There are a handful of shops selling an eclectic assortment of items from incense to pottery to local arts and crafts. There is an ice shop and a lot of equestrians will ride to the ice cream shop from the campground since it is only a couple of miles. There are no hitching posts, so no really great places to tie up your horse. This means one person has to hold the horses while the other person goes in to get the ice cream. The yoga class was excellent, but the studio had very little in the way of air conditioning. Makanda’s slogan is “The Hippiest Town in Illinois”. I didn’t really get a laid back hippie vibe from anybody. So far, most of the people we have met in Illinois have been borderline hostile. I don’t think it is us. I think the heat and humidity has gotten on everyone’s nerves.