Castle Rock & White Pines State Parks

We always try to take advantage of days where we have nothing planned. We especially love those days during the fall - we never need a reason to hit the road!

On this particular open day, we headed towards Dixon, IL. No real plans...

Our first stop was outside of Dixon at Castle Rock. We love driving IL Rt 2 during the fall. It is a scenic drive that runs alongside the Rock River. We try to stop at the Castle Rock Overlook whenever we are out that direction. There are a lot of steps, but the view is beautiful!

When we left the house, we knew it would be a colder day that we typically like for traveling. We had grabbed coats, hats, gloves, etc. as a precaution - so glad that we did! Being by the water always makes things colder!

We got out and started climbing the stairs at the overlook. Alex, Will & Maddie ran ahead - making it to the top much quicker than we ever would!

As we crested the last staircase, we were bombarded with snowballs!! It had snowed over Halloween and there was some snow still on the boardwalks! If you look closely, you can see the snowballs, flying through the sky towards us.

Direct hit!

The three kids then headed to the lower deck and threw snowballs from there! They were actually doing a great job of aiming/throwing! We got hit a few times.

At one point, the kids turned on each other - here is Alex smacking Maddie with a snowball at close range! Notice that Maddie has one in her hand and wastes no time in flinging it at Alex!

And then Will aimed for Alex too!

We spent close to an hour at the overlook. There was lots of laughing as the snowballs went flying.

We headed a bit further north on Rt 2 and turned around in Byron. We were surprised by the major flooding along the river. It has been a hard year for flooding around the Midwest. We drove along the river in Dixon and a few other areas, ending up at White Pines State Park. We were bummed that the fjords were closed due to high water. It didn't stop us from getting out and walking a bit though. The ground was definitely saturated from all of the rain/snow we'd had during the previous few weeks. As we walked one direction, the kids walked the other way (to the playground) and we soon found each other across the stream from each other. They enjoyed more snowball throwing too!

There were some huge leaves throughout the park. We ended up grabbing a few each and dropping them into the creek from the bridge. It was fun to watch the leaves travel down the "rapids" - some failing and some succeeding.

Remember that I mentioned how saturated the ground was...yep, made it hard to get to the bridge!

The kids wanted to try their Karate Kid skills out...

And of course, no trip is not complete without the Titanic re-enactment! I told them that they failed miserably...they literally had a stream of water 15 feet away and chose to NOT use that as a prop. FAIL! lol

We ended our day in Dixon looking for dinner. A friend had suggested Angelo's Pizzeria so we gave that a try. We loved the restaurant and the food was pretty good too. It was nice to try something new which we will most likely try again, next time we are in Dixon.

Must have been a good day...