Starved Rock State Park is home to bluffs, canyons and waterfalls among a number of trails. Tourists and visitors consider the wildlife and activities along the Illinois River to be wonderful for sightseeing and adventure.
For Dave Glacinski, it is his home away from home. The Central Illinois native and Lexington resident volunteers at least once a week. In August, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources named Glacinski among the 2025 outstanding volunteers of the year, for his work at the state park about an hour north of Bloomington-Normal.
Glacinski retired in 2011, and a few years ago his wife passed away, so he wanted to find something to fill his time. Glacinski found solace in the park’s volunteer program, but it was far from the first time he had been to the park.
“I’ve always been going up there ever since I was a little kid, even like in high school. When things are just, like, crazy in high school, I would need some time away. I’d go out to Starved Rock,” he said. “It helps me clear my mind.”
Glacinski has volunteered for many jobs in the park, including trail maintenance, picking up litter and graffiti removal. He said volunteering gives him a sense of achievement.
“You feel like you accomplished something,” he said. “You can go out and help keep the trails somewhat clean and you take out a whole trash bag of garbage … so, you feel like you can help out in that way.”
But Glacinski’s favorite volunteer job is working the desk at the visitor center.
“At the visitor center, people are very welcoming, so I feel like I have friends up there,” he said. “I enjoy going up and visiting with them and helping out. I think the parks system is under budget constraints, so they can use any help they can get.”
A family affair
It has been three years since Glacinski began volunteering at the park, and even longer since his first visit.
“I grew up in Ottawa, so our family was always going to Starved Rock. My parents would take my sister and myself and some neighborhood friends down to the rock quite often,” he said. “As I was growing up, I was in Cub Scouts and we went down there and then Boy Scouts, so I always felt at home.”
Glacinski’s family has deep ties to the area; his father and uncle worked locally for President Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps employing unemployed young men. While his father worked on a dredging barge in the New Deal initiative, his uncle worked near the present-day Starved Rock State Park Lodge.
Glacinski has passed the love of the park onto his descendants as well. He often takes his granddaughters, Avery and Ryan, and his grandniece, Lilly, out on the trail with him to pick up litter.
“I really didn’t think that they would take to it. When you get out there and it’s summertime, it’s hot. You’re sloshing around sometimes in streams and trying to pick stuff up,” he said. “But they really enjoy it. All three of them took to it, so they come up any chance they get.”
Starved Rock has several features to attract young eyes looking for nature, like the waterfalls, the soaring bald eagles or the view on high atop cliffs of the Illinois River. For Glacinski’s crowd, he said it is a “conditioned response.”
“Up there at the café, they have a horrible thing if you’re a diabetic. It’s like ice cream and gummies and they call it a mudpie,” he said. “They all like that, so at the end of the day, I take them up there and they get that.”
Glacinski admitted one day his age will catch up to him, but he never anticipates not being able to go out to Starved Rock. He said he would miss not being there.
“I do like the camaraderie with the staff up there, so it’s kind of like one family. I would miss that,” he said. “My plan is not to stop going. I may have to slow things down or take another avenue like maybe just work at the desk, not go out on the trails. But I hope not.”
