Travel

When the weather outside is frightful, you may be looking for someplace delightful. Head to an indoor botanical garden and you can pretend you are in the tropics without leaving the state. Springfield, Chicago, Rock Island and just-across-the-border St. Louis all host warm and humid greenhouses as part of their botanical gardens. Once inside, you […]

When I was growing up, I loved going to my mom’s cousin’s house for Sunday dinner. Iva Rose would serve seemingly endless platters of chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, garden vegetables and rolls. To top it off, she would bake several homemade pies and cakes filled with deliciousness and served with love. Those […]

Black Hawk, John Deere and Ronald Reagan are an unlikely trio, but you can honor all of them with a trip along the Rock River. Stop to see the stately trees at White Pines Forest State Park and take a riverboat ride to add a nice note of nature. The Dixon-Oregon-Grand Detour area, 170 miles […]

Bob Stenander and Ross McIntire may be decades apart in age, but both are pretty proud of Galesburg and its success in making the city’s history come alive. Stenander, a retiree and tour attendant at the Galesburg Railroad Museum, loves to walk visitors through the restored mail car, engine, caboose and Pullman sleeper car on […]

Alton is a curiosity-seeker’s paradise. Where else can you celebrate the 100th birthday of the world’s tallest man, pay homage to an anti-slavery and press freedom martyr, marvel at antique torture devices and possibly commune with ghosts, only 85 miles from Springfield? In fact, Alton has so much history related to the Civil War, floods […]

Mention the Galapagos Islands and many think of tortoises or Charles Darwin. Layne Zimmers discovered there is so much more to this area of the world when she was selected as a Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic Grosvenor Fellow and had the chance to spend eight days with photographers, naturalists and storytellers on the Islands […]

Driving east on I-72 on a crisp fall Saturday, you may encounter carloads of orange-clad Illini fans, heading to Champaign-Urbana to tailgate outside Memorial Stadium or cheer the football team inside. While fall can be fun on the University of Illinois campus, the twin cities offer a multitude of treasures in spring and summer. Several […]

David Estes should ask Ancestry.com to check his DNA for a museum-founding gene. His mother, Betty, late tourism director for Pontiac, Illinois, founded the town’s popular Route 66 museum in 2004. Not to be outdone, David’s father, Dal, built the Livingston County War Museum upstairs in the same building a few months later. These days […]

Illinois claims four U.S. presidents so President’s Day should put us in the mood to commemorate. We can head a bit north and take in Lincoln and Washington, two central Illinois cities boasting the names of the most famous chief executives. History buffs will find lots of links to Lincoln in that city, but shoppers […]

Editor’s note: This article marks the first in a series of monthly travel columns focusing on Illinois in honor of the state’s bicentennial year in 2018. It’s a good thing early state leaders moved the capital away from Kaskaskia in southwestern Illinois. Otherwise we might all be living west of the Mississippi. As students of […]

Sappington House is a brick structure that takes the visitor back in time. PHOTO BY CINDY LADAGE My friend and I seized on a chance to go to the beautiful Thomas Sappington House in St. Louis for a meal and tour. The Barn restaurant outside of the house is a combination gift shop and tea […]

PHOTO BY BRENT BOHLEN A sitting Abraham Lincoln statue across the street from the old Statehouse in Vandalia commemorates Lincoln’s term as a state legislator there. He and others succeeded in moving the state capital to Springfield and thus away from the National Road. “Road trip!” can evoke images of fun and freedom for family […]