White Pines Forest State Park — Attraction in Pine Creek Township

If I were just rating the hiking, I'd give it an easy 5 stars. While there aren't any long hikes (1 mile is the longest)The Sleepy Hollow Trail is still great fun. A few good scrambles, some fun stream crossings that the kiddos will LOVE, and beautiful landscape features! BUT... the camping...

1. the campsites are absolutely piled on top of each other with little privacy between them. The best site at the Cedar Ridge Campground, in terms of space and privacy is 24 (second might be 25 or 29).All of the others are piled on top of each other.
2. related to #1 was that we experienced some of the WORST ettiquite we've ever experienced from other campers. Multiple sites had music blaring, one of our neighbors was loudly listening to a soccer game on the radio until 1am and shouting, an RV parked at a site near us ran their loud generator until about 10pm, folks let their kids start screaming at 6am. 🤦🏼
3. People driving their cars to the bathroom/shower building in the middle of the night, as opposed to grabbing a flashlight and walking the (maybe) 100 yards. 😑 Camping is about returning to nature. It's about finding quiet and peace away from the hub-bub of it all. If you want to listen to music outside, go to your backyard or local park. Teach your kids, as we have taught ours, that early mornings and evenings are time for quiet play at the campground. The camp host did nothing to keep the unruly campers quiet, despite being only a couple sites away and surely hearing the commotion. The only positive I can offer about the camping is that the sites were clean and well kept and the sites along the back loop are next to a grove of pine trees, providing a pine needle carpet to pitch your tent on, which is wonderful (especially if you've ever had to camp on rocky or hard packed ground before, you will feel very spoiled!) We aren't sure if we will ever return, given how bad the local camping ettiquite was and how the host did nothing about it, but we all agreed that we definitely wouldn't ever camp here again unless we could get site 24. It's the only one worth booking in...

A very popular, northern Illinois state park known for quiet setting, camping amidst tall stands of white pines, nostalgic log cabins, a lodge restaurant serving top quality meals, and fords. Yes, fords! Through one of the park's streams, fords were constructed instead of bridges allowing visitors to drive through the creek. You're never too old to enjoy submerging your car tires in a moving stream! We came to hike some of its trails. All are short and looped and intersect. We parked at the cul-de-sac lots and headed to an old stone bridge. We followed the easy path, managing four low water crossings and completed the Sleepy Hollow Tr (orange) in no time. We then turned upstream to find the Sunset Tr (white). Having to circumnavigated a ford stream crossing, we found a flight of stairs on the right ascending to the ridge above. There, the Sunset Tr went to the right that would loop back. Going to the left is the Lookout Tr (red) that brings you to the lodging area. We were hungry and wanted to find the lodge and its restaurant before hiking further. By staying on RED (either direction) the trail will open to a road accessing the lodging area of quaint, log cabins. The food at the restaurant has an excellent reputation. Even the lunch we had was superb. I had a cod fish sandwich with sweet potatoes fries. My wife savored the W.P. Sampler...

What can I say about White pine spark that you people don't already know Beautiful wedding canyon their park is beautiful you can drive through the water you can go camping swimming the place is just magnificent They have nice playgrounds to play on and just a lot of open space, trails to walk, It's that our families favorite place to do our family reunions because our family is so big we all can fit in the park and have had weddings out there the park is good for a lot of things and they also do a rock climbing show in the summer once it twice the year maybe more I've never asked I've always just went He should go check it out It's really cool. punching a big monster truck climb the canyon walls! Come and have some great time with family and friends Just get out of your loved ones together The more the merry and the better time it'll be. Oh yeah and they also have a skating rink across the street called White pines skatepark I grew up it's a lovely place the floors are gorgeous to skate on and for the ones that don't know how to skate they get put in the middle of the rain to learn so that way we don't have to worry about running them over they always have that rolling place and I've always loved it. Keep me safe while I was learning how to skate! Can't wait to take my daughter and...