During Covid-19, I explored a wonderful hiking area only 100 miles from my Chicago home. Starved Rock State Park is a plateau built on sandstone through which streams have cut canyons, cliffs, and waterfalls as they make their way down to the Illinois River (which the early explorers, like the Jesuit Marquette, used). This area is like a tiny version of the Grand Canyon. Hiking trails are great, with lots of ups and downs. While you can't backpack, you can stay at the campground and day-hike trails, which I did in July and October. The scenery is beautiful, as you can see from my pictures. Most of my pictures were from October, which had nice autumn colors but was too dry to have good waterfalls.

The campsites included electricity, which I used in two special ways:

• ELECTRIC LUNCH BOX (see pictures 06 and 07). Get an inexpensive electric lunchbox (preferably one with two cords, one plugs into a regular outlet and the other plugs into your car). Use it to warm up meals; it especially works well with Hormel Compleats prepared meals (like the one with meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and gravy), which are inexpensive and don't require refrigeration. Dump the package into the electric lunch box, use a knife or fork to break up big pieces and keep the food in a somewhat even layer on the bottom, add a tablespoon of water if the food looks too dry, reassembly the lunch box, and plug it in (to outlet or car) for about 40 minutes. The resulting hot meal is pretty good and costs far less than freeze-dried food. If one package isn't enough, use two packages and heat for about 80 minutes.

• ELECTRIC HEATING PAD FOR SLEEPING (see pictures 25 and 26). To make it, get an inexpensive Sunbeam electric twin-size sleeping pad. Cut off the frilly part would go under the mattress, add 3 fishing line loops on each long side, add 3 tension cords to the loops, place the electric sleeping pad on usual sleeping pad (I used a regular Therm-a-Rest Basecamp Self-Inflating Foam Camping Pad, which is perfect for car camping), tie the tension cords underneath to keep the electric sleeping pad in place, and zip it all into a sleeping bag liner (I used a Foceat liner with zipper). This made for luxariously warm sleeping when the weather got down to the low 30s in October (try a setting of 6 or 7).

Click a little picture below to enlarge it. To see all the pictures in sequence, click the first picture (or here) and then just keep clicking the right-arrow for the next picture.