At the entrance to Ben and Ellen King’s 12-cottage sanctuary stands a post with road signs: right for King’s Drive, left for Good Hearted Lane. But the gravel drive is circular; the choice becomes irrelevant.
At Kishauwau on the Vermilion, your path eventually leads to both.
Small cabins dot the yard, some with porch lights illuminated, each on its own piece of land. Cords of wood are stacked alongside each cabin. Inside what used to be a Boy Scout mess hall and what now serves as the main meeting lodge, Ben King, 65, greets his guests by name, whether he has met them before or only spoken to them on the phone. He is stocky and gruff with kind eyes, a warm smile and a rough handshake.
His wife, Ellen, 50, appears from a kitchen off to the left and begins ticking off amenities: bottled water and movies can be taken to the cabins, nature hikes at nearby Starved Rock and Mathiesson State Park are invigorating, the cabins’ whirlpool tubs and wood-burning stoves are relaxing. There is horseback riding, cross-country skiing, antiquing. In the summer, there is canoeing, rafting, biking. To the left, beside the several hundred movies available to guests, is a sitting area with fireplace, couch and recliner. Framed photos of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren line shelves along one wall.
In 1986, when the Kings heard Camp Ki-shau-wau, built by the Boy Scouts in 1923, was for sale, they drove out to take a look.
“It was just one of those times everything fell into place,” Ellen recalled. “You know how sometimes you want something really bad and it just doesn’t work out? But as soon as we pulled in the driveway, Ben said, `Do you want this place like I do?’ And we bought it.”
It came with four cabins, a mess hall and a pool hall, all run-down. Although Ellen King had always envisioned a bed and breakfast, the camp idea appealed to her, and after they bought it, Ben learned to rehab the old cabins along with his son Jamie and a friend, Jake Lemrise, both of whom live in Deer Park Township. The pool hall became the deluxe cabin, and the mess hall became the common area/office. Over a period of several years, they built eight additional cabins and renamed the place Kishauwau on the Vermilion, losing the hyphens along the way.
Until 1993, when they started weekday rentals, the original four cabins were rented only on the weekends. The cabins have names such as Zonta, Hunter, Winnebago, Shady Oaks, Mother-in-Law. Ben King escorts guests to their assigned cottage, where he shows them how to work the wood-burning stove, the central heat, the whirlpool tub. He points out the charcoal and lighter fluid for the grill and, for the coup de grace, he takes them outside to show the one thing he knows you can’t get in the city. Stars.
(Rates run $85-$300 per night, depending on day and cabin; weekend rates run $200-$300 total for Friday and Saturday nights.)
The cabins, most of which are one large room, come with a table, a full kitchen, an enormous bath and a sitting area, as well as television, VCR, central air and heat, microwave and ceiling fan. The details are important; they make you feel like you’re alone at Grandma’s house, free to explore, stretch out, leave clothes unfolded on the floor, sleep late. Ellen King decorates with brass lamps, antique tins, cloth animals and porcelain figurines, red-checked curtains and wooden bears hanging from doorknobs. There are no phones.
“We wanted (the cottages) to be cozy and romantic,” Ellen says. “We didn’t want them to look like a motel.”
In fact, Ellen King has donated the last of her own furniture to her cabins, because the couple spend most of their time at the main lodge. But she seems pleased about this, happy to share so much with a place–with people–she feels so connected to. Besides, she laughs, “I tell everyone I have visiting rights.”
In 1986, Ben King was self-employed as a blaster/driller. Ellen worked in a pharmacy and suffered from a near-debilitating ulcer. Health insurance was the main reason she kept working at the pharmacy until 1993.
“I knew I’d have (an insurance) rider (for a pre-existing condition),” she says. “And that was my biggest concern, that ulcer. Ben was self-employed, so I carried our insurance.”
But in August 1993 she made up her mind to quit her job, and they bought their own insurance complete with the rider she feared. Now, more than four years later, that rider is off her policy and she hasn’t had a problem since the day she quit.
“(Kishauwau) was always our someday dream,” Ellen King says. “When our children were growing up and we’d work 16-hour days and we thought we had to get somewhere in life–Lord only knows where, but we thought we had to get there–and we’d lie in bed sometimes at 2 a.m. and we’d say, `Someday, when the kids are grown and when this is paid off and when this happens . . . ‘ It was our dream to keep us sane. We took the plunge, and we’ve never regretted it.”
Kishauwau is on 83 acres, 60 of which are wooded areas for walking. The Vermilion River snakes behind the main lodge and deluxe cabin. Most important to the Kings was to offer a place where guests could find serenity. Some weekends 8 of their 12 cottages are rented to repeat guests.
According to Ben, this place offers time to spend with a loved one.
“When you see people walking around out here holding hands, that means a lot to us. That means they’re content, happy,” he says.
He concedes that it sometimes takes a lot to calm down the high-strung city folks. Chicago police, he laughs, are particularly challenging, but even they leave feeling rejuvenated.
“This is a chance for couples to reconnect,” Ellen adds. “It’s important just to have time to talk.”
Most of the people who visit Kishauwau, according to Ben, spend all of their time together, and unless there’s an emergency, the Kings never knock on any cottage door. But the experience is as enriching for Ben and Ellen as it is for the guests.
“We’re more accepting of (the differences) in people now,” Ellen says. “You accept people for who they are, and it’s really made a difference.”
She grows teary when she tells of one guest, a woman from Orland Park, who had visited regularly with her husband and had become friends of the Kings.
“She had cancer of the lymph nodes for some years,” Ellen recalls, “and she came here after she’d made the decision for no more treatment.”
The Kings have had weddings and honeymoons here. They’ve had regular guests share Thanksgiving dinners with them.
“Our guests become our friends,” she says. “Sometimes we feel guilty charging them.”
Betty and Al Taylor of North Highlands, Calif., have stayed for the month of October at Kishauwau for the past four years. They heard about it from Betty’s brother in Oglesby.
“It’s very restful,” Betty Taylor said. “You can’t stay at (Kishauwau) this long and not become friends with (Ben and Ellen).’
Al Taylor agrees. Every morning he shares coffee with Ben in the main lodge, and this year, the Taylors were joined by their son and daughter-in-law, Al and Mendy Taylor of Sacramento, and their granddaughter, 9-year-old Caitlin. It’s nice, Betty said, because at Kishauwau, guests can entertain in their own cottage.
“(The Kings) are always very accommodating,” she said.
Shetland ponies graze in a corral near Kishauwau’s entrance. Ellen keeps them for their grandchildren or the guests’ children. Across the road is a flat, winter cornfield, temporary home to a thousand blackbirds.
One summer, when Ellen King was cleaning out the horse stables, she saved a bee from drowning in a puddle of water. “I’d never noticed bees before,” she says.
She studied the bee, saw it clean its face with its first set of legs, its head with the second set, and the rest of its body with the third set. Then she started noticing butterflies. And she joined the Audubon Society.
“You always note the sunsets, the big things,” she says, “but people don’t take time to look at the little things, and they just pass you by.”
The Kings have had offers from guests to buy the place if they ever sell, but they believe what they’ve got is priceless, that the calm, the beauty, the peace of the place exists as much for them–indeed, in them–as it does in the trees, the crisp wind, the placid river and the spring wildflowers.
“Don’t worry,” Ben King assures guests as they leave, “this place is going to be here for a long time. It’s a diamond in the rough. That’s what Kishauwau is.”
———-
For more information about Kishauwau on the Vermilion, call 800-659-0627.
