Travel Log

TW’s Apple Festival Birthday

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Holidays, Travel Log /

Years ago, when I lived in the Upstate and TW lived in Florida, she brought the little kids up for her birthday. I searched the internet for some place fun and interesting to go and celebrate her birthday and I found the Hendersonville Apple Festival. So we jumped in the car and we drove up. It was fun but more importantly it started a birthday tradition – that’s what happens around here… you do something once and suddenly some people consider it a new tradition. So, every year I’ve struggled to come up with “apple festival” ideas for TW’s birthday.

It hasn’t been easy. Florida doesn’t really have a helluva lot of apple festivals! One year the kids painted still life apple paintings and we had our own apple festival with bobbing for apples in a bucket and stuff like that. Another year I took her to St Pete, to a quilt shop, and we looked for “apple” fabric (as well as other fabric.)

This year, I again turned to the internet and found Apple River Canyon State Park, Illinois and discovered they were in fact having an old fashioned family festival. I sent the driving directions to my iPhone and sent secondary driving instructions to my phone for another possibility just in case that festival was a dud…

We started the morning with breakfast at Hamilton’s which is right across the street from us, and a restaurant we had not visited. We all enjoyed it, RJ in particular. While paying the bill, I got a work related emergency phone call and had to run back home to resolve a problem – then we started our drive (about an hour later than I’d originally planned.)

We drove. And drove. And drove. And never thought we’d find it – but then, we did. Except there was no festival! It was just a park with very few people in it. WTF??? How frustrating to drive that far and then … nothing.

So we drove out of the park and proceeded to get lost. Driving around the “mounds” while amusing was really not anyone’s idea of a fun birthday and we were all pretty grouchy about being locked up in the car with no payoff when suddenly we stumbled into Elizabeth Illinois. Since we have an Elizabeth, that perked us all up. We perked up even more when we discovered Apple Valley Fort… which was apparently where the festival had been held.

Who knew there was an Apple River State Park and an Apple River Fort? We didn’t but we know it now, damn it.

We arrived at the fort about 15 minutes after the festival ended but the reenactors were nice and showed us around, one of them shot his gun for us (hah.) and we watched the special little Apple Valley Fort movie. And then it was back in the car for us.

Not quite the apple festival birthday I’d envisioned but whatever, we went with it and it was amusing. We also stopped at Beefaroo on the way home, for dinner. Interesting. Worst food ordering experience we’ve ever had, but interesting and everyone was happy enough with their food.

The next day, I decided we’d take a chance on the other apple birthday festival I’d considered before settling for Apple River…. we headed to Long Grove for their Irish fest.

Long Grove is a little like Helen, Georgia (not the Bavarian part but the theme touristy town idea) so I thought everyone would be both amused and entertained, even if they weren’t really interested in the Irish fest part of it. (though we did enjoy the Irish dancers.)

Long Grove has a shop called The Apple Haus and we all had apple donuty type things, apple cider, apple smoothies and we bought a couple of cookbooks (ask TW to blog about those, on Retro Food – they’re very amusing and very retro…)

They have a yarn store that we all enjoyed and an interesting craft store. There was a gift shop where we found a ton of great gift ideas for just about everyone and another gift shop that had some gourds that Liz and I really liked. I think Liz would like to try her hand at some gourd design.

Even with the confusion between Apple River Canyon and Apple River Fort, it was a pretty successful apple festival birthday weekend.

And TW, this year… you are 39:

39.png









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The House on the Rock

9 Comments / Family Funk, Friends & Family, Holidays, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

Since we didn’t have an opportunity to take the kids away for a summer vacation prior to the move north, we thought we’d use Liz’s 10th birthday as an excuse for a mini vacation. The problem we had was – where should we go that wouldn’t cost a fortune, we are after all still recovering from the move.

We considered one of those nifty chain hotels that has the indoor water park. We considered one of those funky towns around here that are trying to turn themselves into tourist destinations by having tons of mini golf and mini water parks. We thought about a lot of things but when TW said “How about House on the Rock?” and I said “Huh? A house? On a rock? Fine, whatever you want” I thought maybe we should just stay home. What kid wants to go to a house on a rock for her 10th birthday and what teenagers would want to accompany her on such a trip. Hah. I changed my mind as TW started explaining it and the minute I loaded the House on the Rock webpage I knew it was perfect. I booked the hotel immediately. Creepy, interesting, relatively close (though I did have second thoughts when I saw it would take 3 1/2 hours to get there) and inexpensive (less than $300 for a 2 room hotel room that sleeps up to 8 and full tour packages for 5.)

On the Saturday morning of Liz’s birthday weekend, we loaded everyone into the car and started to drive toward breakfast. None of the kids have even mentioned breakfast and none had mentioned a stop at Starbucks either. So, as we were approaching the last turn toward our breakfast destination… “Anyone want breakfast?” All three replied that they did. TW asked Liz what she would like to have for a birthday breakfast and she said “Pancakes or waffles” Huh. Weird. So I asked “If you could have ANY breakfast in the WORLD for your birthday, what would it be?”

KRISPY KREME

Hah, that’s more like it. I told her to look to the left and there it was… Krispy Kreme, her favorite. I think we could have eaten our doughnuts and turned around and gone home and she’d have been happy. But we didn’t. We carried on down the freeway until we reached the first rest area in Wisconsin. We used the facilities and then wandered around their travel brochure area where Prince J and I discovered the PERFECT tourist attraction for us… The Mustard Museum where the King of Condiments lives. Hahaha. Since I know the Prince would rather stay home for his birthday than drive 3 1/2 hours, even for condiments, I decided we should take a bit of a detour and head to the Mustard Museum before House on the Rock. TW indicated it was pretty much on the way so we were set.

Almost to Madison, we started thinking about lunch and TW said “Ella’s!” This is the restaurant TW talks about all of the time. It’s the restaurant she wants to recreate someday, but do better. So, we took another detour and headed into Madison for lunch.

Ella’s was totally packed but it was exactly what TW always said it was. Full of toy gadgets and fun things and we all enjoyed the food (and some of us enjoyed the desserts) and the girls enjoyed the carousel.

Then, it was condiment time! A mustard vending machine! All the mustard tasting a boy could ever want! Crazy mustard puns. And lots and lots of old fashioned mustard jars. They even gave us a little mustard song booklet when we left.

Onto House of the Rock hotel, boy what a long drive. The last “six miles” were hell. Pure hell. The kids were ready to get out which means they were touching each other and yelling and screeching and just being generally idiotic and ridiculous. Once we released them from captivity and went in, they were fine. Thank goodness.

The hotel room, much to my surprise, was very large and very clean. 3 queen beds and a pull out couch. Microwave, fridge, very large bathroom. Only two problems – only 5 channels on the TV and no wi-fi in the room. The kids pool with the submarine – HUGE hit.

Finding dinner wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be – we ended up at Culvers and I got Culverized with a butter burger (never heard of it and don’t even want to think about how to “journal it”.) Fried cheese curds! Custard for the kids. Everyone was happy.

Next day – House on the Rock. I’m not even going to attempt to describe it. It’s not possible. It’s like Ripley’s Believe it or Not but better. The infinity room – the dude must have had some great drugs to come up with that. I didn’t really stop to think about what I was walking on (air) until TW mentioned the swaying and then RJ started to bounce and then… OMG amazing and frightening all at the same time. The Prince didn’t even get halfway and started backing up, which is good since I’ve seen him barf in tourist attractions before – it ain’t pretty.

We toured the whole place, we ate more fried cheese curd, we had to tear RJ away from the carousel. We had a super super time – obviously since as we were leaving the Prince said “We did a LOT of walking for fun and exercise and it REALLY was FUN.”

On the way home, we took another detour to Peck’s Farm Market, which we had passed on the way to House on the Rock. It’s a farmer’s stand with a petting zoo. Llamas! Goats! Pigs! and Carriage rides!

It was a fun weekend and a good birthday for the little one. (more photos here)

Preparing to enter the house on the rock

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Off the Beaten (Subway) Track

2 Comments / 2008, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Travel Log, Women /

I have been looking forward to BlogHer Contributing Editor Suzanne Reisman’s book, Off the Beaten (Subway) Track, for ages. It sat in my wishlist folder for a long time. It sat in my shopping cart for an even longer time. I finally took it out of my shopping cart and decided I’d just buy a copy while at BlogHer ’08 and have Suzanne sign it since she’d be there too.

TW bought it, while I was in a session, and it was already signed. But, I wanted a PERSONAL note and Suzanne graciously complied and I love it.

I started reading it on the trip home from the conference and didn’t stop laughing until I finished it last night. I should point out that I find it a lot more amusing than TW does because I have spent a lot more time reading Suzanne’s writing, listening to her talk, interacting with her via email and on the phone. The book sounds like Suzanne so it’s more personal for me than it will be for someone who just picks it up from the shelf (or orders it online) without knowing Suzanne. Even someone with only a passing relationship with her may not find it as amusing as I do. Or maybe I find it amusing because Suzanne and I share the same type of sense of humor?

The penis jokes in the book – awesome.

Her review of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors had me laughing so incredibly hard, I could barely breathe (and this is probably related as much to my children’s worship of Alex Grey as it is to Suzanne’s irreverent writing – my kids, they are insane about A.G. and his sacred mirror-ness.)

Also, Suzanne is not aware of this, but TW was supposed to take me to the NYC Police Museum many years ago and didn’t come through – so any book with a review of that museum within the first 50 pages has me sold.

I want to book a trip to NYC right this second and visit every spot highlighted by Suzanne – that’s my kind of sightseeing! Now if I could just convince her to write the same type of book for Chicago…

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Moving… sucks

6 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Friends & Family, Travel Log /

Real quick post – we’re halfway there or almost halfway there. We did the first 900 miles today, after a very rough pack out Thursday and a very rough clean up on Friday (yes there were injuries.) We’ll do the other 950 miles tomorrow and unload the truck on Monday.

We’re all fine, but tired and sad and pretty grouchy but we haven’t killed either animal or each other and haven’t even been tempted to do so. I call that a win.

Details will come – eventually. We leave for the bay area on the 13th so don’t give up on me if I don’t blog it all quickly. BlogHerCon will obviously take priority.

Anyone out there live in Manchester Tennessee? When did y’all get civilized? There’s even a Starbucks. Who knew?

Oh… quick update on my mileage – first tank, only 47.2 (mostly stop/start traffic with only the last 20 miles done at a level speed.) Second tank, 52.7 – all freeway but following a uHaul that didn’t maintain its speed very well (aversion to lane changing and a hell of a lot of traffic.) Third tank, 55.1 (mountains but not as much traffic so more steady speed highway driving.) I’ll call my dad early next week and get his mileage update. heh.

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Always Patsy Cline

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Friends & Family, Sights & Sounds, Travel Log /

When I bought the tickets for Always Patsy Cline I thought both Jenn and TW would roll their eyes at me or possibly refuse to go with me. Neither are big country fans and as far as I know, Jenn doesn’t even know who Patsy Cline IS.

But, they were game with nary a rolled eye.

We arrived late. We left the hotel late to pick up Jenn. It took her awhile to say goodbye to the boy (which caused ME to roll MY eyes) and then I drove right past the parking garage entrance on Cumberland and then drove down Church St and back to the garage and then drove around the garage a bit. Heh. We were escorted to the very front row during the opening song – before “Patsy” came out – before “Louise” came out but still it was the first song. Front row seats were not great and I was worried again that I was going to get lynched by the two women I dragged to the show…

But. It was awesome.

Loved it. I am so glad I bought the tickets. I have no idea what Always Patsy Cline will be like if it’s in your area but if you get to Spoleto and those chicks are performing it – you should go. It’s fun.

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Banana Monologues

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Travel Log /

When I realized we were going to be in Charleston DURING Spoleto I almost cried. I have not been able to attend a Spoleto event since Jenn was a toddler and every year I’ve said “next year, I’ll be there!” and every year… it didn’t work out.

I quickly ran to see what kind of tickets were available for the days we were in Charleston and rather than being disappointed that most events were already sold out, I patiently clicked through everything available and bravely selected two shows that would fit into our time schedule. Both are actually “Piccolo Spoleto” events and one was “Piccolo Fringe“. (You have to learn a whole new vocabulary to understand Spoleto.)

We saw the first last night and this is the one I was most concerned about.

Banana Monologues

A stand-up show about One relationship, where One woman gave One man the best sex of his life… and all the crap to go with it. This is the subject matter of the hilarious one-man show, “

Misogynistic much? Yep, but it was funny and from the reactions of the small audience in the very small and interesting American Theater most people agreed. The older men in front of us were most appreciative of the monologue. The women they were with laughed almost as much but… not quite. And that was interesting as well.

I spent some time thinking about how many times I have seen middle age men get up and leave during the first 15 minutes of the Vagina Monologues and pondering why those men couldn’t handle that show yet women didn’t get up and walk out of Banana Monologues. Why is that? Patriarchy maybe? 😉

We enjoyed it. Really.

And tonight, Always Patsy Cline… heh.

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Optimistic answers

7 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Travel Log /

And the questions about the move just keep on coming… some I will never answer in a blog post but if you’ve asked, I’ve replied by email anyway – that’s good enough for those. Other questions will be answered in a series of posts I’ll be making about moving – stay tuned, I swear the first one will appear next week. Other questions, I’m trying to answer as time allows. Time. I need more of it.

Now, on optimism and positive thinking. Yea. Whatever. That’s pretty much my answer to those of you who are bound and determined to get me to look at the bright side. Yea. Whatever.

I spent more than 20 years moving around the world because the Air Force insisted I do so. I was full of optimism and positive thinking. Any time I see a military spouse upset about her new tour of duty, I kindly remind her that “your tour is what you make of it….”

I know, I know. Really, I do. I appreciate the attempts at positivity but they aren’t all that necessary. Once we’re in full-fledged move mode, I’ll be fine. Once we’re there, I’ll be mostly fine. In the meantime, I’m going to bitch as much as I want to – or need to, because believe me – I need to.

And while I’m sure living in the suburbs of Chicago will be AWESOME for a dozen reasons, it’s also never going to be a place that I regret leaving. This, I can guarantee. And that’s ok. I can live anywhere for eight or nine years. I’ve lived in worse places and under worse circumstances. It will be fine. Once we do it and once we settle into it.

And to answer one of Vered’s questions, very specifically…

Can you name something, anything, that is better over there compared with Gainesville?

I’ve already named one – Joy! Joy will live there! Joy who is the mother of THE Jory DesJardins. That’s better.

Also, major airport makes it much easier to book flights to wherever we need to go. Flying from Gainesville stinks – to put it mildly.

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More from the great north

2 Comments / Coffee & Tea, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Foodie, Travel Log /

I know, I’m sorry, I came home to a ton of work and have had absolutely no time to blog more about our trip north. I still don’t have a lot of time and I’m working on a series of posts about moving that won’t come ’til next month – hopefully this will tide you over for a while.

When we arrived in Chicago and had that weird automatic that expected me to shift, we took a quick driving tour of houses we were interested in seeing – we started with a house in Lincolnwood then hit two more in Glenview. From there, three houses in Wilmette and then onto five in Evanston and then finally two in Skokie. By the time we hit Evanston, TW was ready for a pit stop so she said “if you see a McDonald’s, I’d like to stop” (code for I have to use the bathroom.)

This caused me to realize that we’d been driving for a very long time, covering a lot of territory and I hadn’t actually seen a McDonald’s or any type of fast food besides Dairy Queen, Jimmy John’s and Einstein Bagel – all in strip malls. We’d also seen Starbucks in strip malls. But no stand alone McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell etc… hmmmm

I kept driving and finally when we hit Dempster, I knew we’d find some because I had heavily researched Dempster because I was SURE we were going to rent a house on that street. (We didn’t.) I pulled into McDonald’s – TW raced for the restroom – I pulled out my phone to call Michelle. I also ordered a coke and while I was ordering, I said to Michelle “Well, it took us two hours of driving to find a McDonald’s.” The woman who had just ordered in front of me turned around and burst into laughter. I thought for sure we were going to see ourselves on Overheard in Chicago. heh

A lot of you have asked “So, what’s it like in Evanston/Glenview?”

It’s hard to describe, particularly if you’ve never spent much time in Indiana or Illinois. It looks like THAT. I think we boiled it down to “Evanston looks like Chicago but without the stuff that makes Chicago cool.” and Glenview looks like a suburb of Atlanta would look if Atlanta was in the midwest. Does that help?

Let’s see… what else can I tell you?

I finally ate at Cheesecake Factory. I’ve never been – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I’ve always wondered why people go there for birthdays and make a big deal of it. It’s a chain, what’s the big deal. I see now. It is a chain but it’s a specialty chain. And I enjoyed it.

We went to Trader Joe’s, finally! Yay. There’s one around the corner from where we will live. No more care packages from California are necessary (though I have greatly appreciated the ones I’ve been sent.)

Also, The Blind Faith Cafe in Evanston was awesome. I had this Shiitake Gorgonzola Biscuits thingy and it was awesome. I said awesome, right? We also hit the Cafe Express on Dempster and the chick working was very nice, coffee was good, too.

What else do you want to know?

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A little helpful advice…

7 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Pet Peeves, Travel Log /

Dear citizens of Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette, Skokie, Glenview and beyond….

When you meet someone who says “I’m moving to Evanston from Florida” your answer should really NOT be anything remotely similar to “Are you CRAZY?” Also, blank stare, mouth hanging open and “You’re kidding, right?” is also not all that helpful.

I understand the shock. Believe me. I understand. I’m going through it.

It would really be very helpful if you would just answer with “Welcome to Evanston” and leave it at that.

After all, if you can’t say anything nice about your own town… maybe it is better if you don’t say anything at all?

Thank you.

Flamingo House Floridians Moving North

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