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Shades State Park
3 reviews for Shades State Park
3 reviews in English
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Review from Lynn F.
Chicago, IL
6/8/2009
Just returned from a weekend at Shades State Park, and I'm feeling good! Just a little over a 3 hour drive from Chicago, Shades provided the escape from the city I needed. The park wasn't too crowded, the campers were quiet, and they allow alcohol. Winning combo for me!
Our group agreed that we got a really great site in the camp. You can reserve site number 87 online. It's a quiet spot, fairly secluded for car camping, and has a water spigot next door. The bathrooms were pretty rough--my biggest problem with them were the swarms of flies frantically buzzing about. There are plenty of pit toilet-type bathrooms, but there is also a comfort station with flush toilets and showers.
For activities, we canoed and hiked. A few minutes away, you can rent canoes or tubes at Clements Canoes. For hiking, there's no need to leave the park. There is plenty of beautiful hiking in Shades. This is s great weekend getaway spot within a short-ish drive from Chicago. -
Review from Laura L.
Chicago, IL
7/11/2011
I would NEVER go back here, and the whole group I was with agreed.
We were a group of 10 people in their late 20s. We felt so disrespected at every turn. One rule they were really enforcing in spite of it being a rule that would hurt no one if broken was 1 car at each camping spot. Still, we were respectful of it except when we had to jump one of our cars' batteries. After telling them this when they stopped to tell us (they were always circling looking for 'law breakers'), the rangers (multiple rangers in multiple vehicles) just kept circling us, coming to the spot in less than 5 minute increments and yelling. This was a legitimate problem we were trying to fix and they didn't car. They offered no help, just yelled. If they had a solution for jumping a car without being next to it, I would've loved to of heard it!
We were being too loud the first night, this we will admit. The first thing they did was ambush us, card us and look for drugs. We are not 15, the people they carded were 28! We didn't get treated as adults. You can get really far with an polite, nice mention of "Hey, could you guys cool it down a bit? I know you're on vacation but we'd appreciate you being respectful of others and you are being kinda loud." Instead they just came over and started yelling. What was EXTRA creepy about this was when they finally came over they said, "And you probably don't want to pee in the poison ivy." It's creepy enough that they watched one of the girls peeing...but that happened like 15 minutes earlier so they were just like watching in the dark from a distance for 15 minutes.
The next evening - around 6pm, one of the rangers just parked his car across the road from us and watched us for well over an hour. Remember, at no point were we doing anything wrong. We were laughing, cooking out, just hanging out, we were loud the first night but quieted after they yelled - but for some reason we were such a threat to them being a group of 10 20-somethings, they just deployed someone to constantly monitor us before it was even dark out. At one point, he marched over saying "I heard you say the F word 7 times in the past 20 minutes, knock it off now!" Again, swearing isn't illegal and all you had to do was ask nice and not remind us that you're doing recon on us.
Plus, the park was the farthest thing from nature - everything paved, campsites butted right up against one another, tons of rangers driving around in anything from an SUV on his own to 2 people in a huge 15 passenger van - and they had 1 recycling bin for the entire facility. If you actually appreciate nature at all, don't go here!!!
Seriously avoid. If you are less than probably 45 or don't have kids with you, you will be given a permanent babysitter the whole time. These rangers wholeheartedly ruined the camping. -
Review from Matt C.
Minneapolis, MN
8/4/2008
I have no idea why Turkey Run is so popular.
Shades is just down the road, bigger, and much more secluded. The trails were empty, and the park was very clean. The price wasn't bad either.
The campsites were somewhat small. We had 9 people in 5 tents over 2 campsites and it was pretty packed. Some of the sites too I noticed seemed like they would be challenging to pitch a tent on level, non-rocky ground.
For a state park in Indiana though, this is pretty damned good. The only issue we had was some faceless lady that came and yelled at us at 2am for being to loud. She wasn't a ranger and she didn't have a face, so we didn't think too much of it. We stayed in "Locust Grove" and those bugs were much louder than my drunk friends.
