Seep-springs streak the sandstone at Starved Rock, and after a wet spring a waterfall drops into a canyon bowl you hear before you see it. You walk the canyon floor on wet sand and stone, the trail cool under the walls while the prairie up top is already warm. Spring is the waterfall chase, and you take the trail into the canyon until the sound builds and the fall hits a pool at the back of a narrow bowl. Some canyons hold water after rain and some stay dry, just sand and stone, and you find out when you walk in.
From the bluff, the Illinois River sits in a wide bend below the dam. Winter eagles work that water. Fall turns the same walls copper, and that is when the lots fill.
The walls are St. Peter sandstone, cut by old meltwater. The falls are rain-fed, so a dry summer can leave the bowls quiet.
I-80 west from the lakeshore reaches the canyons near Ottawa, and the overnight sits in the trees above the river on electric pads that fit a van bunk. October weekends fill the loops, and the same dates take the vans, so lock the overnight first and book the van second. West Loop stays open through winter, and East Loop closes the weekend before Thanksgiving through April 1, as of September 2026.
If you need more sleeping space than a van bunk, Illinois RV rentals use the same electric loops. The loops and the town are a Joliet campervan trip, and farther down the Illinois, Peoria has the bison at Wildlife Prairie Park and the sand prairie at Sand Ridge.
Lake Michigan, Illinois Beach and the Indiana Dunes
A dune ridge lifts off the beach with open water behind it. The beach-ridge shoreline runs from Zion toward the Indiana line, a boardwalk over marram grass, a swimming beach, and the lake going out to a hard horizon. On a clear day the Chicago skyline sits as a haze across the water.
Illinois Beach is the in-state night, in Zion. Across the line, the dune ridge is taller and the lake is the whole horizon.
Illinois Beach in Zion and the Indiana Dunes overnight are a Chicago campervan trip. Naperville is the western-suburb start for that same lakeshore weekend.
If you keep going past the dunes, Indiana is the next state. North of Zion, the lake is Wisconsin.
Garden of the Gods and the Shawnee National Forest
The sandstone bluffs at Garden of the Gods stand over a forested ridge, with Camel Rock in profile on the skyline, and the humidity sits in the hollows below. It is the far south of the state, a long day down I-57 from the river canyons.
October is the crowd here too. Fall color fills the primitive loops, and the vans go with them. Giant City's lodge and Cave-in-Rock over the Ohio are the rest of a Carbondale campervan trip.
Route 66, Chicago to the Mississippi
Neon motel signs sit against open highway, and roadside stands like the Cozy Dog line the same stretch. The corridor leaves Lake Michigan and runs across farm country toward St. Louis. Springfield is the stop the road is actually for, with Lincoln-era brick downtown and a night that is not a pass-through. Joliet's in-town stretch is the Chicago-end heritage piece.
Near Petersburg, about 20 miles northwest of Springfield, Lincoln's New Salem is the overnight. It has electrified and primitive loops, hydrants and a dump station, and no water or sewer at the pad, as of September 2026.
The Illinois leg ends in St. Louis. Across the river, keep going on the Missouri corridor.
In the northwest corner, Galena sits on the Mississippi bluffs with barge traffic below a sandstone palisade. You sleep at Mississippi Palisades, electric on 110 of the pads, showers running May 1 through October 31 as of September 2026.
Illinois state park camping
Most Illinois DNR campgrounds keep first-come sites next to the reserved loops, so a late arrival outside a fall-color weekend still has a shot. The reserved ones go through ExploreMoreIL. Winter closes pieces of the system on a rolling basis, and the loops that stay open go primitive.
Summer is hot and humid, with mosquitoes. Peak biting is around sunset and again before dawn, and floodwater hatches follow heavy rain by about two weeks.