Tourism

 Following up on my last post on tourism, we had easily half a dozen families stop in at the store that said they were staying in Carbondale and visiting the Shawnee region.  We handing out Carbondale Main Streets new downtown dining and drinking book and pointed them in the way of attractions such as Boo Rochman (Castle), which given the nature of our clientele, they had either already visited or were very enthused to learn about about, Giant City State Park, alto Pass and Bald Knob and the assorted wine trails.

We did ask them were they were staying and, to a fault, no one said any of the local hotels. Every family had booked one of the local AirBnBs. Also, rather surprisingly, none of them said they were down for the wine trails.

Illinois Ozarks

Maybe you knew this but I did not.  Given the amount of flat land between the two ranges, I always though that the name "Illinois Ozarks" was just another name used for the Shawnee Hills because of their proximity to the Missouri Ozarks. Turns out I am wrong. The two sets of hills are part of one eroded tableland and the flat area between the two is due to the meandering and flooding of the Mississippi River. If the Mississippi did not run there, the Ozarks would run continuously from Indiana to Oklahoma