10 Shawnee Forest Hidden Gems You Need To See Are you searching for Shawnee Forest hidden gems? You’ve come to the right place. I am Hiking with Shawn, after all. I go hiking every chance I get, and it is my goal to almost every acre of the nearly 300,000 acres of...
Community Hikes In 2023, I want to start Community Hikes as a new feature of Hiking with Shawn. Community Hikes will be planned group hikes that you register to join. These hikes will be free to the community. The community is anyone who wants to hike, no matter where...
First Hike of 2023 Where was your first hike of 2023? We decided to hit the trail at Piney Creek Ravine for our first hike of the year. We went with a small group. Some had been there before. Others have never been there. We were hoping for a lot of waterfall...
Last Hike of 2022 Our Last Hike of 2022 was a doozy! We decided to go to Fountain Bluff for the last hike of 2022. If you don’t know, Fountain Bluff is on the west side of the Shawnee National Forest near Grand Tower. It’s an area once inhabited by ancient people from...
Happy New Year Happy New Year from Hiking with Shawn! I’m going hiking today to start the New Year right! We went to bed before midnight last night. We slept well from a long hike on New Year’s Eve. We made sure to hike on the last day of the year. And we make sure we...
Southern Illinois Outdoors Forum Southern Illinois Outdoors is the new forum in town. Social media isn’t for everyone, and I understand that. Before social media, there were discussion forum communities. These communities had better privacy controls, were more...