SoIL, wine, hikes, spring

It’s already spring in southern Illinois!  We drove down Thursday evening and all the daffodils, magnolias, and fruit trees were in full bloom.  There were little spits of green on the tree branches where the leaves were starting to pop out.  And the birds were signing as loud as they could.  We saw/heard woodpeckers (red headed), owls, hawks, voltures, robins, nut hatches, and I’m sure I’m missing some.  It’s truely the perfect time to visit down there.  Before the bugs and crowd get bad, but warm enough for the shops to start opening their doors at normal hours. 

Friday was perfect.  Sunny and temps in the 60ies.  We packed up a lunch and left in the morning to drive farther south to the Cashe River.  Mom and Dad visited this last year and it looked so cool.  It’s a swamp/wetland area where huge cypress trees grow in the water.    We hiked around for a good 2 and a half hours covering about 4.5-5miles.  It was light easy hiking and we were the only ones out there.  It would have been cool to kayak around the river some, take pictures close up to the swampy trees, but we weren’t prepared for kayaking.  Plus after our hike we were ready for some food, and Chris had spotted a winery across the street that was calling to us.  We stopped in this winery and did a small tasting.  The wines here were very sweet which isn’t my thing.  I did buy a bottle of swamp water white, which was their driest white.  I did find out that there was a whole nother wine trail in this area of Illinois.  We didn’t try many of these places, instead we headed back up to the Shawnee Wine trail to sample a couple places before they closed for the day.  We stopped at two wineries on the way back.  The first one, StarView quickly became our favorite.  The bartender was great, knew the wine well and knew what to recommend.  They had a great selection and an extremely comfortable atmosphere.  The second place we stopped at was Blue Sky.  We’d stopped here last year as well, it has a great atmosphere, but it’s more of the college bar scene.  We ordered a glass each and went outside to just enjoy the weather. 

Saturday the clouds came in and spit rain off and on in the morning.  Nothing horrible or too strong to stop our hike.  We just hiked around Giant City State park.  It’s a nice little park that has lots of huge boulders left behind by glaciers.  Makes for some fun hiking.  After lunch we went over to Cobden and then Alto Pass to see some more wineries.  We tasted at 4 more new wineries but I only really liked wine from Alto vineyards.  Illinois wines are very sweet and so it’s hard to find a vineyard that really knows how to make a good dry wine in IL.  Alto had wonderful dry wines.  yummy yummy wines.  Alto and StarView turned out to be my faves this year.  I bought quite a few bottles from each place.  My grand total came to 12 bottles, 10 made it home, and 7 of those were from StarView and Alto vineyards.  I have lots of wine now to review on Winey Thoughts!
Southern Illinois is really a neat little area.  Small towns and friendly people.  We’re already thinking about another weekend trip back.  I’d like to go when there are leaves on the trees.  It’ll be hot and buggy, but I think it’s worth checkin out.

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