Fort Kaskaskia SP to Rockwood; Distance = 14 Miles; People Met = 1
We actually “met” more than one person today, but the others met us only to tell us not to take pictures. We walked by Menard Penitentiary and I completely understand why we were told not to take pictures of the facility by the person manning a barbecue at the shooting range for the prison. I was a little less understanding of the guard who told me I could not point my camera towards the Mississippi River and take a picture of a passing train with the Chester Bridge in the background. Little did he know I took the picture anyways.
Forbidden Photo
So Illinois has been the one state where we’ve been told not to take pictures, of factories or of prisons. For the record, I have taken pictures of both in other states without issue. To get all the negatives out of the way, we also followed the worst stretch of road to date, Illinois 3 south of Chester. There was very little shoulder, save for a small gutter shaped like a V, often against an embankment that afforded no other choice but to squeeze ourselves along that foot crunching gutter. Meanwhile, haulers with coal roared by us at the rate of one per minute.
Voted worst shoulder for hiking along the ADT
To be fair to Illinois this is the one state so far where all the rural homes seem to be nicely kept. The peripheral structures, sheds and so forth, are in similar disrepair as might be found in Kansas or Missouri, but every house on an Illinois back country road to date appears to be in good shape. There was one, puzzling exception.
Only thing missing is the house!
We used the wifi at the Chester public library and encountered another positive for Illinois. Throughout Missouri we constantly had to jump through hoops to use the library wifi, providing IDs, needing codes, even paying a fee. At the Chester public library we simply connected. The librarian was quite nice as well. Jillian Yankey even said we could take our time when it got close to their 7:00 p.m. closing, but we finished up in time regardless.
Librarian Jillian Yankey
Other Photo
That's OK, Cindy, I'll wait
