Games & Hiking

I wrote this last week, but forgot to post it...  better late than never!

Another weekend has flown past and the month of June is about to pass us by… where do the days go?  Saturday morning and afternoon were a whirlwind of running errands, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning in preparation for some friends coming to the house for dinner.  I fired up the trusty kitchen aid mixer and made some garlic bread dough (from scratch, of course) and Karen made lasagna with meat and zucchini in it.  I continued my battle against the weeds in the yard and constructed a stack of wood in the fire pit for lighting after dinner.  I also harvested our first veggies out of the garden, I came inside with a decent pile of green beans.

Our friends came over Saturday evening and we dined on fresh baked bread, lasagna, salad and laughter.  After dinner, the laughter continued as we played a few games and sampled a few different bottles of adult beverages (local beers from Wisconsin breweries and a couple different Moscato wines).  The local beers didn’t alter my general dislike of beer, but the wines weren’t too bad… I definitely seem to prefer the sweet stuff to the bitter/tart bite that most wines have.  After the sun set, we set fire to the wood pile and sat around the fire roasting marshmallows.  I continue to be amazed by how many adults have not had smoores before…  I guess everyone didn’t grow up camping and came fires like I did.  We did them in the traditional graham cracker and chocolate style, next time I’ll introduce them to my way of doing it:  Roasted marshmallow between two soft bake chocolate chip cookies.  That is way better than the graham crackers.

On Sunday morning, we decided to hop in the car and head north to the banks of the Illinois River.  Our friends had told us about a couple parks there, so we went up to Starved Rock state park and walked around a bit.  The place was packed with people, but the further we walked away from the parking lot, the less people we saw.  It was nice to see an area of trees and walk on a trail with some grade change; however I got a good laugh when I found out that the “high point” was only 125 feet above the river.  I couldn’t help but think that it was tiny when compared to the Tallulah gorge in Georgia that is almost 10x as high.  Snarky “this isn’t very tall” comments aside, it was nice to see the river and walk around in the trees.  Evidently this area has a lot of bald eagles in the winter time, so we might have to do a fall/winter visit and see if we can spot some eagles.

 A barge waiting to go through the lock at a dam across the river.  There are a series of 8 locks that must be navigated in order to go from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi river, which can be taken down to the gulf of Mexico.  Sounds like an interesting road... errr make that "Boat Trip." 

A view of Starved Rock, a high point where a group of indians retreated to for safety after being attacked by another tribe, but were surrounded and held there until they eventually died from starvation (hence the name Starved Rock).

I’m still suffering from the rib/chest injury that I sustained while playing paintball two weekends ago… I still wince every time that I sneeze, lay down or sit up or try to do too much with my left arm.  I am almost ready to go to a doctor to see if it is something more major than my “self diagnosis” of bruised ribs, but I’m pretty sure that will just be a waste of time and money.  Past experience with rib issues showed me that there isn’t much a doctor can do for rib injuries, other than to lighten your wallet a little.  I’m not convinced a lighter wallet will help my situation, so I might just stick it out another week.  I’m going a little stir crazy though, as I haven’t hit golf balls since it happened and I’m missing that.  Looks like I’m officially hooked on the sport of golf.