Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Recreational Area

Chandlerville, Illinois

It was strictly a coincidence, but our stay at Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Recreational Area (JEPC, to the locals) was the same weekend as the annual “Saddle Up for St Jude” fundraiser. This meant that dinner was sold at the pavilion (fried chicken on Friday and pulled pork on Saturday), followed by a live band. On Sunday, there was an auction and bake sale. We didn’t really join in any of it. However, the campground was pretty full since it was a special event.

The state park campgrounds have a similar theme in Illinois. You get electric hook-up for your trailer. Something we really needed because with temperatures approaching 90 degrees and humidity at 70%, we really wanted to be able to run our air conditioning unit. But, water is limited to one or two faucets in the campground. Normally, this is no big deal because we are the only ones in the campground - we just pick a campsite close to a water faucet. However, with a full campground, we couldn’t hog the only water source. So, we hauled out our 45 gallon water tank, placed it on the back of the truck and filled up. I noticed some campers were resigned to carrying buckets and some knew the score and had large tanks, but we probably were the best prepared. We use a small transfer pump to pump water from the tank to the horses’ water buckets and to fill the water tank in our LQ.

As is the Illinois standard, no corrals are provided - you get hitching posts. We set up our corrals and we were the only campers with horses that weren’t tied up. One camper told me that it seemed to him that corrals like ours were fairly commonly used by equestrians from the Western states, but are a novelty here in Illinois.

There was a camp host that came through to check on each camper. They were kind enough to provide a map, but the map was pretty useless. It didn’t have any trail names or numbers or even any landmarks. Likewise, the trails weren’t marked at all, so once we were out on the trail and hit any intersection we had no clue where we were.

The trails were muddy and a combination of pasture and forest. When we were riding the pasture sections, the trails were easy and flat. When we were in the forest, the trails were muddy and the water crossings were tricky.

So, this was a bit of a schizo ride. Internet was pretty slow and cell service was non-existent. We were the only people in the campground with Internet since we had our Winegard, so I expect we shouldn’t complain. We drove into nearby Beardstown in the hopes of getting better internet, but that town was an internet desert and it was a waste of gas.

The trails were muddy and the water was deep in some of the creeks due to the recent rains. $20/night for the campground. They don’t take reservations for campsites except on the weekends, so I reserved the campsite for Friday through Sunday, figuring nobody would take a campsite on Thursday night knowing they would have to move the next day. The camp host came by and collected our money for the one night I couldn’t pay for on-line.