Forest Glen Preserve is a 1,800-acre nature preserve in McKendree Township in Vermilion County, Illinois. It is located about 4 miles east of Illinois State Route 1 between the towns of Westville and Georgetown. It was founded in 1968 and serves as the headquarters for the Illinois Native Plant Society.
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This was a nice backpacking trail.
It was a mix of easy and moderate hiking with the latter portion following East Camp being the most moderate.
We never found the visitor center, but we’re able to easily find the start of the river ridge backpacking trail. There were nice laminated placards to put in your car window for those folks who pre-planned to backpack.
The red trail marks and arrows are pretty easy to find as were the junctions. Only issue we had was at the crossroads of Old Barn Trail and Deer crossing, but we figured it out pretty easily with the map. Note—the map is not really to scale, but is otherwise helpful.
The Group camp area is nice and spacious and accessible via car.
The river is seen along the final leg to the East Camp. There is one trail to access it.
The East Camp has 5 sites and an outhouse. They are nicely space and have a picnic table and a fire pit.
Overall, the woods were quite beautiful. Our trekking poles came in very handy with some of the hills at the end. It was nice to over along the ridge, but also be in the valleys.
Would highly recommend for first time backpacking/campers. A nice one to start with.
You can also fish...
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This place was awesome! We did the backpacking trail. You just follow the red markers the whole way through the preserve. The women working in the visitor center were super helpful and extremely kind. There are pawpaw trees that bear fruit along the the trail! So many mushrooms (you can identify them using the picturemushroom app, but don’t eat anything lol)! Great wildlife and great campsites. I wish there was a well for water at the East Campground. Make sure you bring plenty with you! The bugs were really out at night so don’t forget bug spray either. When you finish the trail you can buy a patch. We also bought maple syrup made from the trees in the preserve and they came in beautiful glass bottles with sugar crystals inside. I will definitely do this...
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Lovely campground. Electrical hook-ups and water close by. We were able to top-up our on- board water tank at our site with just two short hoses. Handy dump station on the way out. Warning: we had NO cell service with Verizon. This location is about 7 miles off of a Stare highway on a narrow road that is tricky at night. Be sure you have all provisions before you head out there. Because we were in our motorhome and needed to go back into town every day, we decided not to go back for our 3rd night. Driving out in the dark and getting parked late at night was not our cup of tea. Still, recommend and we would stay here again. Family and...
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