IL State Park Illini State Park

This was a tale of 2 campgrounds in one state park. If you come here, stay in the Great Falls loop of the park. The sites were well taken care of and you’ll have restrooms with flush toilets & showers. Some of the sites back up to the Illinois River with nice views. You are closer to the boat ramp if you have kayaks. This loop was really nice & the campground host is located here too. You can use the showers no matter where you are camping.

Then there is the Whitetail Loop where we stayed. This was not taken care of and I would not camp in this loop again. The grass badly needed to be mowed. The electric box is shared by 2 campsites and you may need a really long cord to plug in. For some sites it would mean running the cord through poison ivy to plug in. The campground host said it is a problem for a lot of people. We had to park off of the gravel to plug in. We could do it since no rain was in the forecast. You could see the site flooded badly at times. You cannot see or access the river from these sites.

The beginning of the loop has the sites really close together. Further in, they are spread out which makes the shared electric boxes a problem. The only toilet is a pit toilet. There is a nonelectric loop next to this. The sites looked better but the water spigot was shut down, so you have long walk to access water.

You can drive down to see the barges go through the lock . Pretty cool to see. The day use area of the park was nice too. We were just here one night on our way to Necedah. It was just strange to see one loop well cared for & the other not taken care of.

Camping

Pic is of the lock at sunset.
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I tried to get a spot at Starved Rock, but they were booked. If I had only seen one the nice loop at Illini, it would have been a glowing recommendation. If we had gotten here 30 minutes earlier we could’ve changed loops, but we missed the last spot.

When we were driving to Moraine on our way back through Illinois, we both held our breath wondering what it would be like. It was nice so we were pleased.

 

I can do without the poison ivy.

 

Me too, I’m really allergic to it.