Back to Illinois

On Monday, we moved back to Illinois, though we could not yet move back to Paul Wolff Campground as we need to be out for 7 nights (so we can return on Tuesday). 

I found some pictures that Carl had taken on Sunday that I neglected to post...

Carl did a "selfie" behind himself and got 4 of our group...

We stopped at McDaniel Park in McFarland to enjoy the shade for a couple of minutes...

You can see other bikers are continuing on the trail behind where we were in the shade.

On the way back, a pair of cranes were crossing the bike trail.

On Monday morning, we took one more ride on this trail...

... and got a selfie along the boardwalk where we had gotten a picture with our bike-riding crew on Sunday.

We left Madison, heading to an Illinois State Park, Rock Cut...

A map from the information board with trails identified.

We're only here for one night, and need to get to Paul Wolff relatively early on Tuesday, so we haven't even unhooked the Jeep...

... it is a large campground with several loops, though most sites we have seen are not very level (Gracie's front tires are off the ground and she is only barely level... makes getting into the front door a bit of a climb!).

I have been having tooth pain for over a week... I saw a dentist near Elgin before we left Paul Wolff, and she did not find any obvious issues, so... she made me an appointment with an endodontist on Tuesday at noon -- thus the reason to get to Paul Wolff early. I am hoping that they may actually be performing the root canal on Tuesday -- the dentist made the appointment for me and explained my situation. It would be great to get it taken care of... ibuprofen helps dull the pain, but it would be nice to have it resolved.

Almost Annual Bike Trip

Warning: questionable picture within this post!

Sunday completed the "Almost Annual Bike Trip" weekend. This is a trip that Carl and Sue, Bob and Kathy, Greg and Candis have done for several years, excepting the last two. This year, Carolyn and Roger also joined, so I wasn't the only "newby" on the trip.

Carolyn had taken a picture of Bob and Kathy at the Madison Capitol building on Saturday:

Bob and Kathy

Besides the Farmers' Market, we had other excitement on Saturday... We decided to stay in the Capitol Square area for lunch and got lunch at FromagiNation (https://fromagination.com/) - sandwiches with Wisconsin cheese. They had tables on the sidewalk outside, and while we were eating, the first "excitement" occurred... we were shocked and dismayed as the "World Naked Bike Ride" made two circuits of the Capitol Square (https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/watch-now-world-naked-bike-ride-returns-to-madison-after-year-off/article_7510b224-cc03-53ec-9125-78a81c3dcc71.html) right by our tables.

Let's just say that most of the bodies were not improved by being displayed in the altogether.

The article I linked says that their goal is "to promote body image positivity and alternatives to fossil fuels" -- but that was not obvious to us, anyway, as observers.

As we were about to finish our meals, Carolyn noticed a woman walking up the sidewalk in obvious distress. As a retired respiratory therapist (40+ years of experience), she immediately sprang into action, getting the lady into a chair, getting water to cool and hydrate her. The impression was that the lady had gotten overheated, but, as the man with her brought the car around to the front of the restaurant to take her to their hotel, she became nauseated, so the decision was to call 911 as she may have needed IV fluids to deal with dehydration. The emergency vehicles came and took her to the hospital, where, hopefully, they were able to minister to her and get her back on her feet.

As we were driving back to the hotel where the rest of the group was staying, we saw a single naked bike rider along the path by the lake... it occurs to me that it may be, uhm, feasible, for some people, to ride naked in a group... but... it seems it would become significantly less feasible to walk out of my apartment building or home naked and ride a few miles into town. Who am I kidding -- it wouldn't be feasible at all, group or single!

Now, another funny thing about this is that 2 of the 3 couples staying at the hotel were asked (when checking in) if they had come to participate in the "bike ride". We think that the first couple checking in shared that they were there to participate in a bike ride with friends who were also coming... but after seeing the Naked Bike Ride go by, we wondered what the hotel folks were referring to... We thought it would have been funny if the front desk person had said, "Oh, I didn't expect you to have luggage!"

It was quite hot and humid on Saturday afternoon, so we decided to delay our own bike riding until after supper. We played cards at the hotel through the afternoon. If we'd only had "Bicycle" playing cards we could have said that we were using our bike all afternoon! Finally, after supper, it had cooled enough that we went out for a short ride (about 4 miles) and enjoyed the Capital City State Trail (https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/capcity). We capped off our day with a visit to Culver's for ice cream.

Sunday, the couples staying at the hotel checked out early, got breakfast, and then came over to the campground. It turns out that the Capital City State Trail connects to the one that comes right by our campground. We started out riding out toward McFarland which is the part of the bike trail that goes across about a mile long boardwalk.

We stopped at one of the rest spots along the boardwalk and a fellow who was jogging by offered to take our picture -- we are a happy group!

We rode to McFarland Park and then back to the campground. We decided to cross the road by the campground and head back out on Capital City State Trail to get back to the point where we had turned around on Saturday evening. We successfully made it there, and then back to the campground... 13+ miles in total:

We enjoyed our bike-riding weekend, and most of all fellowship with friends!

Saturday morning at the Dane County Farmers' Market

Saturday morning, we headed in to Madison to visit the Dane County Farmers' Market (https://www.dcfm.org/about). Carl and I had visited it when we were here back in June (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/06/saturday-morning-to-dane-county-farmers.html).

Arriving at the State Capitol - vendor / producers set up all around the square.

So many beautiful bouquets of flowers!

Popcorn for sale!

An aerial picture that one of the orchard farmers had displayed of their corn maze. What a neat design!

A view of the crowds at the market... looking one way...

... and then the other.

We went inside the Capitol building -- the painted ceiling under the dome...

... one of the paintings around the dome area.

Close-up of the "Legislation" painting.

Some of the flowers outside.

With the Capital Building behind

Sunflowers were a popular purchase at the market...

... more sunflowers.

Kathy took some pictures of us at the Capitol Square -- Carolyn and Roger with us...

And Greg Candis.

Unfortunately, Kathy was taking the pictures of the couples, so we didn't get one of Bob and her! Maybe we'll get one before our weekend is over...

A move and visiting

On Friday morning, we moved Gracie from one site to another in the Lake Farm Park Campground...

Gracie is just visible in the picture beyond the pavilion structure as Carl prepares to move her to our new site (where I am standing)... a really long journey (not!) for our travel day! Unfortunately, it takes almost as much effort to close up the rig to drive it a few feet as it does to drive a couple hundred miles. We did, however, take the opportunity to wash a load of laundry before we moved, and then dump and add fresh water on our way from the old site to the new one.

Friday night, our friends came over from their hotel to the campground for dinner with smoked cream cheese on crackers for appetizer, smoked pulled pork sandwiches with cole slaw, macaroni salad and sweet corn on the cob for main course, and chocolate cream pie for dessert -- everyone seemed to enjoy it, along with the tour of Gracie and a campfire after the sun went down.

Greg and Candis -- unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the others... maybe I'll get them before the end of the weekend!

Smoking again

We are near Madison, Wisconsin for a bike trip with friends on Saturday. The other 3 couples are coming into town on Friday, and we invited them to join us at our campsite for dinner on Friday evening.

Pork shoulder roast with rub applied on Wednesday evening to rest overnight in refrigerator.

Onto the grill by 8am Thursday morning to start smoking... that's a lot of meat!

About 2 hours in to the smoking...

There were two (large) pieces of meat -- we would normally only smoke one at a time, but it takes a lot of pellets due to the length of time -- so we decided to go ahead and smoke all of it. It took about 12 hours for the smaller piece and an additional two hours for the larger piece to reach the desired temperature of 203F.

We wanted to get the smoking completed early both so we weren't concerned about it being done in time for dinner, and so Carl wouldn't have to work on it through the night Thursday night into Friday morning. We also are moving campsites Friday at the campground (they did not have a single site available for the 6 nights we wanted to be here, but they did have sites available for multiple days -- so we've been in site 51 for 3 nights, and will move to site 4 for the rest of our stay) - that would have complicated the completion of the smoking. So, now, for Friday, we're just finishing up our stay on site 51 with a load of laundry and then we'll dump our tanks and fill with fresh water as we move to site 4.

An interesting entrance/exit to Walmart

The Walmart that is closest to us here at the WG Lunney Lake Farm County Park is interesting/unique because it has parking underneath on the first floor, and the store is on the second floor. As a result, there are escalators taking customers from the parking level to the shopping level.

Now, you might think... that could be difficult when you have a cart load of groceries, but... they have that figured out:

There is a cart-escalator next to the people escalator -- you put your cart through the plastic swinging doors (designed to keep humans out -- as there are silver posts in the floor around the entrance to the human escalator part designed to keep carts out)...

The cart escalator carries your cart and groceries down as you take the human escalator down (the fellow at the bottom is awaiting his cart which is in front of ours).

Our cart reaching the bottom...

Carl claimed our cart after we got off the human escalator. In this picture, you can see the plastic swinging doors behind him that serve to discourage human access to the cart-escalator. You can also see that one of our fellow-customers is carrying her bags of purchases in her hand -- I noticed that it seemed people were more likely to take their purchases out of their carts at the top near the store entrance and leave the cart there rather than taking the cart to their car.

I did not notice how the Walmart employees get the carts back to the second floor -- I'm guessing that there is an elevator provided for that purpose, but we did not see it being used.

A week away

The Kane County Forest Preserve parks (Big Rock and Paul Wolff) are first-come, first-served campgrounds, that have a 14 day stay limit, after which you need to leave for at least 7 days before returning for another (up to 14-day) stay. By Tuesday, we had stayed at Paul Wolff for 2 weeks, and had planned to move Gracie to Big Rock for the week out (the rules allow us to go from one to the other), but we had a bike trip planned in Wisconsin for the weekend of 8/27-29 -- and as plans for that trip were getting more solid, we decided to do our "week out" near Madison, Wisconsin instead. So, we're back at William G Lunney Lake Farm County Park Campground for a few nights!

On Monday night, we met friends Jim and Melanie at Culver's in South Elgin for a last visit before we were heading out.

On our way up to Madison on Tuesday, we decided to stop at another Culver's...

This one is in Edgerton, Wisconsin, and is the "world's largest Culver's".

Heading in to the Culver's...

... inside the restaurant...

The "flavor of the day" was "Turtle". There is a different flavor of the day each day at each Culver's -- they have vanilla and chocolate custard all the time, and then a unique freshly-mixed flavor of the day. I enjoy their "Turtle Sundae" which is has hot fudge, hot caramel and pecans. When the flavor of the day is Turtle, they essentially make a Turtle Sundae for the ice cream serving. YUM!

Side note: visits to Culver's may be impacting our lack of success in weight loss... may be!

One of the nice things about this particular Culver's is that they have a very large parking lot with large spaces that big rigs (like Gracie) can park in.

Gracie at the Culver's in Edgerton.

You may be able to see that the skies were a little threatening, which was one of the reasons we decided to stop. We talked with some other folks at the campground who had arrived about an hour earlier than we did and they said it was really pouring when they arrived... so... our stop enabled us to miss most of the rain and have an easier drive and campground setup!

Blue Angels - Chicago Lakefront

On Saturday, we met up with Carl's son, Steve, to see his new apartment and watch the Blue Angels perform at the lakefront in Chicago. Normally there would be the Chicago Air and Water Show on this weekend, but, it was scaled back to only include an "air" component, and only the Blue Angels, but, in compensation for the reduction in the event, it was made available for free.

We parked near Steve and Shay's apartment in the Wicker Park area of Chicago. The apartment is in this building - their apartment is in the back, on the 3rd and 4th floors.

After greeting their dog, Indie (from Indiana Jones), and getting an apartment tour, we set off on our bikes to Lincoln Park on the lake.

(Shay was visiting family in Philadelphia, so we did not get to see her on this visit.)

Steve led the way mostly on quiet side streets or bike lanes.

The crowds increased as we got closer to lake side, so we decided to walk our bikes rather than challenge walkers or cars for space!

We found a great spot to sit on the concrete steps at "Fullerton Beach"...

with a great view both south toward downtown Chicago...

... and Navy Pier.

The show was scheduled to start at noon, and we did see some planes flying very high, and then pairs of planes... and finally about 12:25, 6 of the Blue Angels came right at our area of the lake shore from across Lake Michigan... then in singles and pairs and a group of 4, they wowed us for about a half hour...

two inverted and two upright

Coming from over Navy Pier

As they were ending... 5 in formation...

... and finally, all 6 in formation at the conclusion.

Carl takes such great pictures, and he also took videos which I put together and published in about a 2 minute movie on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_RwDWdbTKwQ

After the air show was over, we rode back to where the Jee-rage was parked near Steve's apartment (here we were waiting for a vehicle to clear the bike lane at a stop light), and then headed back out to Elgin...

... to Scott and Kristin's house to celebrate Thatcher's birthday...

Brother Blaise is ready to help out in the celebration.

Thatcher's birthday decorations and presents were comprised primarily of Cubs and Mario gear!

Big 6 years old!