Over the past month, our team has spent many hours traveling throughout the Midwest to visit new USFWS field locations. While many of the sites we have recently visited were a bit closer to our homebase at the Chicago Botanic Garden, some felt quite different in more ways than one. One hitch that particularly stands out was our most recent hitch to visit the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge near Carbondale.

Crab Orchard NWR is an interesting property, consisting of a series of reservoirs and encompassing nearly forty four thousand acres. There are incredible sandstone features, with some of the most beautiful hiking I have experienced in Illinois, although very different than the majority of the prairie state. If you are in the area, a day visit to the Rocky Bluff Trail is worth the detour! However, like so many of our public lands, there is a weird history with the property here, as some areas were used for the manufacture and testing of explosive devices during the second world war. Luckily, we did not have to survey those areas, and you should avoid these areas during your visit as well!

While conducting our plant surveys, we were joined by a Professional Botanist who was incredibly knowledgeable with respect to regional flora, which was very helpful in locating target species on our list, while also adding a few. Some of my favorite plants that I learned on this trip include the American Bladdernut Staphylea trifolia, the Inland Oat Chasmanthium latifolium, Hibiscus laevis, and the Zig Zag Spiderwort Tradescantia subaspera.

Surveying a refuge with over 43,000 acres meant working up quite the appetite, and we were lucky enough to be blessed to dine at the Famous Lodge at Giant City State Park, not once but twice in one week. World renowned for their Unlimited Family Style Fried Chicken Dinner, this facility (along with the surrounding state park) was completed in the 1935 by the CCC, and not much has changed since then. The taxidermied raccoon and deer really bring in a sense of ambiance lacking in dining establishments further North. Now, I was not going to back away from the meal after reading the words “World Renowned” and “Unlimited” in the same sentence, and was soon to be richly rewarded. I could not have been happier with my choice (except to possibly substitute sweet potato fries for the green beans) and did indeed end up ordering an additional round of chicken. The team was so impressed by the meal, we ended up there the following evening for an encore.

While our trip to Southern Illinois was enjoyable, informative, and successful, I cannot help but feel something was different about this hitch. The plant communities consisted of a number of different species, unknown to us on the team. The hot, humid environment was not kind to our us or our tents, keeping in the moisture. Most importantly though, as someone who was born, raised and majorly consumed fried chicken in the Midwest, every where you order chicken 1) they serve ranch as a side and 2) it is never as good as at the Lodge at Giant City. Southern Illinois may not actually be the Midwest, but it is a cool area of the country to check out (and decide for yourself). 3/3 recommend.