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Garden of the Gods Recreation Area

Garden of the Gods in Southern Illinois October 25, 2020

Autumn is a perfect time to visit Garden of the Gods and I hope you enjoy this video as much as we did the hike.

Garden of the Gods August 7, 2010

These are really old photos, but I decided to share them anyway for historic sake. Does any of it look different?

Garden of the Gods Recreation Area near Herod is Southern Illinois is not to be confused with Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We greatly enjoy our Autumn driving (2 hours from Cape Girardeau, Missouri) and walk at Garden of the Gods. The trail is only 1/4 of a mile, and the sign indicates it will take 45 minutes, but honestly it will take you much longer than that as you climb up onto each area of the rocks and stand for a while to soak in the beauty of the view.

There are other trails and things to do at the recreation area, but just this one trail will leave you feeling fulfilled.

The first section of rocks were difficult for me to climb, but there were folks up on them. I climbed a short distance, but would not dare to go up any further. I want to mention that people have fallen to their death more times than people want to count, so please be extremely careful climbing the rocks. There was a trail around the back of the rocks and we should have taken it to see where it went, but I think that was the only avenue we did not adventure on.

This was the fun view we saw when we attempted to climb up the first set of rocks, but could only go so high in our old age.

This is the view from the wooden boardwalk. It seems spectacular, but there are many more vast views yet to come.

Walking down from the boardwalk we saw a lot of people climbing up that small space on the left in this photo. It was quite tall. Then we realized that people were going up and down the other side of the hole as well.

Here is a photo of the other side and hubby decided to climb up to the hole. You can see the boardwalk in the background.

Look at how small the people across on the rocks.

This is the Devil's Smokestack. You can see how tall it is by hubby standing beside it.

You see people above the smokestack and then wonder how they get there, then as you hike on, you realize you walk right there yourself.

I do not know what it was about this partially leafed tree, but something draws me into it.

Garden of the Gods August 7, 2010