Author: Freya Callahan

Somewhere in northern Illinois, past a stretch of highway that gives away nothing, there is a 1,700-acre tree collection that most people assume is just…

Some road trips through central Illinois turn into a blur of cornfields and grain silos, and then a gravel turnoff changes the whole afternoon. Twenty-three…

Somewhere past the cornfields of northern Illinois, a whistle cuts through the quiet and a century-old coach rolls by with its windows wide open. It…

Somewhere in southern Illinois, a small river town keeps a surprise parked at the base of a tall bluff. You buy a ticket, stand on…

Way down at the southern tip of Illinois, where the state runs out of road and the Ohio River takes over, there is a limestone…

Most people picture Illinois as flat farmland stretching to the horizon, which makes the far southern corner of the state feel like a plot twist….

Somewhere in northern Illinois, less than an hour from skyscrapers and expressway traffic, there is a patch of ground that shivers underfoot. It looks like…

The smell hit me before the sign did: warm sugar, cider, and cut cornstalks drifting across a gravel parking lot somewhere in rural Illinois. I…

Somewhere in southern Illinois, just off a highway most people speed right past, there is a grass-covered hill that turns out to be one of…

Somewhere between the cornfields and the river towns of Illinois, the flat land splits open into narrow stone corridors with waterfalls tucked inside them. Most…

A wrong turn off a two-lane road in Illinois one October afternoon led me to a gravel lot, a wooden trail sign, and a canopy…

The forecast said sun. Two hours into a family road trip across Illinois, the windshield wipers were working overtime and the picnic blanket stayed folded…

Somewhere in central Illinois, about twenty minutes past the last stoplight you’d think mattered, there is a small lake with old Santa Fe train cabooses…