Solo Road Trip: Great River Road & Shawnee National Forest
exploring the Midwest & living out of a Subaru :)
In 2018, I took a solo road trip through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, spending a week camping and hiking and playing on beaches. I was 22. It was one of the best weeks of my life. I think I’ve been chasing that feeling of alone but not lonely ever since.
I’m 28 now, and while I’m a frequent solo hiker and paddler and have done plenty of camping, but in the past six years I haven’t camped solo. I’ve always had a friend who wanted to go with, or I’ve been guiding for work, or my partner Andy has been more than happy to tag along.
Which, I think, is how and why I found myself living out of the back of a Subaru for a few weeks— I wanted to prove I was still tough like that, still competent even without someone else’s vote of confidence to support it.
The Great River Road & Wisconsin Driftless:
I’ll be so so honest with you, early May is a terrible time to camp out of a car in the Midwest. It’s not quite green yet. It rains, but not like a nice, spitting rain that you can mostly stay dry in—
The sort of rain that completely fills the air and works its way into everything.
It storms, and it’s muddy, and it’s cold and humid and hot all at once. Oh, by the way, the mosquitos are out.
Still, spring is my last chance to really travel for myself before the busy summer season, and the good thing about the wet is it will eventually dry.
I started my road trip leaving Duluth in a cold rain, and headed straight for Willow Falls State Park outside of the Twin Cities— a quick walk and a beautiful waterfall.
Next stop? The Great River Road and Wisconsin Driftless Region.
I’ve been kind of fascinating with the Wisconsin Driftless Region lately— Driftless, meaning unglaciated in the last Ice Age and not subject to glacial drift. Here, you can find beautiful erosion patterns as the watersheds of big rivers like the Mississippi and Wisconsin and Iowa have cut into the land for thousands of years. There’s river bluffs, and waterfalls, and the whole area seems quiet, and old, and bursting with life. It feels like a fairytale in a very subtle way.
The Driftless is very Midwest, but it’s so deep Midwest that it feels like a story book, a place you would overlook on a map because nothing beautiful could possibly be in that stretch of middle.
I stayed my first night at Perrot State Park and climbed Brady’s Bluff, high up above the Mississippi, watched beavers and osprey play in the bay on my way back down. Then, I headed to a place that has been on my mind since I first started researching for this trip— Wyalusing State Park.
click here for a guide to planning your own Great River Road trip! + all the hikes I did on this leg of the trip + which campsites to book :)
Wyalusing sits on the river bluff above the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers and boasts some of the most diverse ecology in Wisconsin. Here, you can car camp on a ridge above the Wisconsin River, easily the best view I’ve ever had from a car camping site.
There are trails to lookout points, and along the ridge, and even sand caves with seasonal waterfalls. It’s truly a gem of a state park.
In Wyalusing it poured on me. It was fine while I was hiking, but after I’d showered I headed up to the ridge to set up camp and found that I couldn’t even open up my car to get set up without getting my sleeping bag and blankets wet—
That is, of course, the thing about a campsite on a ridge; you’re really exposed to the weather. Overall, I dried out eventually and my set up was cozy, so I can’t complain too much.
read all my solo car camping tips for beginners :)
Overall, Wyalusing might be one of my favorite state parks in all of the midwest. Between the campsites, the Sugar Maple & Sand Caves Trails, and the lookouts, it just has so much to offer!
Shawnee National Forest, IL:
Do you ever have a place that you just keep hearing about? That’s what happened with me and the Shawnee National Forest this spring— it just kept coming up.
Initially, I hadn’t planned to go this far south. But this winter I heard about the Shawnee for the first time, and from there I continued to hear about it. So I decided to make a detour.
(A long, grueling, eight hour detour. I did not realize it was eight hours of driving until it was too late, I’d already solidified my plans. I forget how big the Midwest Region is.)
It rained my first day, and at this point on night three of my trip I was pretty much over the car camping thing. Everything was damp and humid. I was having fun, but I was also starting to get sick of my own company.
How many days yet to go? Too many, it seemed.
The next morning I woke up to sunshine and a better mood. The Shawnee National Forest is pretty beautiful.
I hiked the Garden of the Gods area twice, and a trail near Jackson Falls to some really neat caves, and Rim Rock.
quick notes for planning a Shawnee Trip:
Garden of the Gods (pictured above, left) is the most scenic area by a long shot, and there are 12 first come, first serve campsites at Pharaoh Campground nearby but it fills VERY quickly there. Check the Forest Service Shawnee website for a list of other campgrounds in the area
The Shawnee is split into a handful of wilderness areas with hiking trails. Burden Falls Wilderness, the Jackson Falls Area, Little Grand Canyon and Rim Rock are all worth checking out. Rim Rock is currently partially closed, but still a great hike.
Overall, hiking in the Shawnee is pretty rugged and trails are not well signed and can be difficult to follow. Download offline maps and really study those routes before hitting the trail.
northern lights in… Clarkston, Michigan?! What I’m up to real time!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Hello Stranger to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.