Fine, there are bars in C-U, but I find that drinking makes me feel like I have a fever. Having just been through that last week, I can definitively state that I have no interest in drinking. (I'll drink a bit of wine with a meal, but drinking for the sake of drinking is just unpleasant.)
Yes, what the university provides is fine -- but I need more than that. I need to be able to step back and look at the world, and if all I see is corn, I'm afraid I'm not satisfied. I once went for a drive down 1st Street to see where it led. After seven or eight miles, I realized it would probably continue to run, straight as an arrow, until it hit a major river. The highlight of the evening was the colorful sign announcing a high-oil hybrid. That's sad.
I've driven around Illinois in search of something a bit more entertaining. The terrain around Danville, Decatur, and Peoria lends some natural interest to those areas, and of course I've been to a few of the state parks, but I'm afraid my New York experience has set my standards too high for Illinois state parks.