Pere Marquette State Park
Jan. 19th, 2015 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tbutlerFound out about this park when a friend of mine asked me to meet him and his family out there; I had some stuff to drop off for him, and it'd been a while since I'd seen them.
Turned out to be a pretty cool place. It's about 30 minutes north of St. Louis, on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi River; the main route there runs along the riverbank, which is a scenic drive by itself. (There's some pics of the drive in a Flickr album.)
The park itself has a fair amount of wooded trails and scenic overlooks; there's also a lodge hotel built in the 30's. (It's showing its age somewhat, but there's one of those beautiful high-ceilinged central gathering areas.)
There's also a nearby pick-your-own-apples orchard, complete with cider and a petting zoo; the cider was good, the petting zoo wasn't too silly, and the apples were very good. :) Grafton, the small town just south of the park, has some fairly obvious tourist/resort trappings (restaurants, kitchy craft shops, and the like), but the food was good and decently priced.
On the whole, if it's within reasonable driving distance for you, not a bad place to get away from things for a weekend. I wouldn't make it a major vacation destination, but it's a good place to visit if you don't have the time or money for a more serious trip.
Turned out to be a pretty cool place. It's about 30 minutes north of St. Louis, on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi River; the main route there runs along the riverbank, which is a scenic drive by itself. (There's some pics of the drive in a Flickr album.)
The park itself has a fair amount of wooded trails and scenic overlooks; there's also a lodge hotel built in the 30's. (It's showing its age somewhat, but there's one of those beautiful high-ceilinged central gathering areas.)
There's also a nearby pick-your-own-apples orchard, complete with cider and a petting zoo; the cider was good, the petting zoo wasn't too silly, and the apples were very good. :) Grafton, the small town just south of the park, has some fairly obvious tourist/resort trappings (restaurants, kitchy craft shops, and the like), but the food was good and decently priced.
On the whole, if it's within reasonable driving distance for you, not a bad place to get away from things for a weekend. I wouldn't make it a major vacation destination, but it's a good place to visit if you don't have the time or money for a more serious trip.
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Date: 2015-01-24 01:04 am (UTC)