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I had a picture of a dinosaur sitting next to a blonde lady but can't find it right now. Here's a view from nearby I took earlier this summer.

Sand Ridge is Illinois' largest state forest at 7280 acres. It was acquired by the state in 1939 and previously called Mason State Forest (located in Mason County.) In 1962, forest fires burned over 1500 acres. The forest was renamed Sand Ridge in 1971. This is a multi-use facility, offering picnicking, camping, backpacking, hiking, horseback riding, snowmobiling, hunting and trapping (deer, red and gray fox, coyote, squirrel, pheasant, woodcock, and dove), and offers archery and trap shooting ranges. A 160 acre fish hatchery, which raises 13 species of fish and is open daily to visitors, adjoins the forest. The Henry Allen Gleason Nature Preserve is on the western edge of the forest. Bird watchers can observe a variety of neo-tropical migratory birds such as oven-bird, indigo bunting, veery, and scarlet tanager.

The forest represents a geologic oddity. Fifteen thousand years ago, the last ice age receded, leaving a vast desert-like expanse, allowing this prehistoric incursion of the Sonoran Desert into the Midwest. As a result, you can find desert plants and animals, including prickly pear cactus, silver bladderpod, pocket gopher, and coyote. Shifting winds sculpted 100-foot-high sand dunes, later planted with pine trees by the Civilian Conservation Corps to prevent wind erosion. The result is a forest of 3916 acres of native black oak, blackjack oak, and hickory forest, 2492 acres of white and red pine, and 800+ acres of open fields and sand prairies. The desert plants are evident in most all of the open meadow areas.