Carbondale
"Carbondale is a college town with wild canyon country practically in its backyard, and nobody seems to make much of that fact."
A Southern Illinois University town that doubles as the gateway to the Shawnee National Forest's sandstone canyons, where a college bar strip gives way within twenty minutes to some of the wildest scenery in the Midwest. Lia and I hiked a canyon in the morning and drank cheap beer on a patio downtown that same night.
Carbondale surprised us, mostly because we hadn’t expected Southern Illinois to look anything like this. The town itself is a modest university city built around Southern Illinois University, with a strip of bars and diners known simply as The Strip that fills with students most nights of the week. But drive twenty minutes south and the flat cornfield Illinois we’d been picturing gives way abruptly to sandstone bluffs, box canyons, and hardwood forest that belongs more to Appalachia than the Midwest.
Giant City State Park
Giant City State Park, just south of town, gets its name from massive sandstone blocks that split apart over millennia to form street-like corridors through the rock, some wide enough to walk through like an actual city grid. We hiked the Giant City Nature Trail in the late morning heat, ducking under overhangs and past ferns growing in the cool shade between the blocks, and ended up at the historic 1939 stone lodge for lunch, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and still serving family-style fried chicken exactly as it has for decades.
The Strip and Shawnee wine country
Back in town that evening, we found The Strip in full swing, patios loud with students and local bands, a reminder that Carbondale is still, at its core, a college town. The next morning, hungover on nothing but strong diner coffee, we drove into the Shawnee Hills wine trail nearby, where a surprising number of small wineries have planted vines into the same rugged, forested hills as the state park, taking advantage of a microclimate few people associate with Illinois at all.
Getting There
Southern Illinois Airport serves Carbondale directly with limited service; most visitors fly into St. Louis, about two hours northwest on I-64 and Highway 13. A car is essential for reaching Giant City State Park, the Shawnee wine trail, and the broader Shawnee National Forest.
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