Quick trip to IL

I made a quick trip to Illinois to visit my oldest brother John. Well, the trip wasn’t quick but the visit was. The drive out there took about 6 1/2 hours- a little longer than my preferred drive time to a destination (that would be about five minutes...) but it was worth it to see John. 

I only spent one full day there because I had to get home as I was leaving town the next day. We did quite a bit of sightseeing while I was there. Happy to spend about 36 hours in western Illinois with my brother...

We decided to go on a hike in the morning on the full day that I was there. John and I both like to hike and wanted to beat the heat as best we could so we decided on first thing in the morning.  The nearest state park to John’s place is about 45 minutes away from his house. On the way, John asked if I wanted to stop at a store operated by an Amish family. Yes, drooling over Amish baked goods, making the arduous decision about what scrumptious treats to buy, and then justifying the consumption because of our hike sounded like a pretty good idea to me. 

The Amish store was really neat. It was bare bones as far as presentation goes- nothing fancy in its appearance. But it sold a number of unique items, at least to this suburbanite. I grew up in the country, though, in a family that had a huge garden that produced enough vegetables that my mom was able to can a large amount of produce so gardening/ homesteading items aren’t completely foreign to me but definitely not things that I see everyday in stores near me.

Sign of the times- this was on the front door of the store

So much fruit pectin!!

The pectin aisle failed to produce a pitted patter in my heart (I just thought all the pectin was neat…) but the popcorn aisle was a different story… There were numerous varieties of popping corn and powered toppings. Yum!!

I bought this bag- can’t wait to pop this corn!!

There were all kinds of different flours for sale- some names I’d never heard of. 

Which baked goods to buy? Everything looked scrumptious and was reasonably priced. We settled on whoopie pies.

… and opened the package to eat them within 10 seconds of getting into the car after making our purchases. 

Then we headed to the state park to hike. John suggested we do a hike that he used to do with our brother Jay. Jay passed away almost three years ago. 

Though we ended up hiking a trail called Deer Run, the only deer we saw were ones on the side of the road when we were driving to the parking lot of the trail to hike it. The deer were in no hurry so they most assuredly did not run :).

I don’t think I have ever seen a sign in a state park in Ohio that specifically welcomes hunters but I have not been to nearly every park so it is very possible that some of our parks welcome hunters in writing. I just hoped (/assumed) it wasn’t deer hunting season since we’d just seen deer close to where we were going to be walking. 

A colorful harbinger of what is to come…

Part of the trail was through a prairie so we walked through grass. Wet grass from dew. Our feet felt disgusting when we were through- the dew soaked through our shoes, socks and feet-  so our next stop was at a Walmart to buy new socks among other things. Our shoes were still wet but putting dry socks on our feet helped ease the discomfort quite a bit. 

Next we drove to a town and saw the place where John will be working soon. We had lunch at the university (where John will be working) and I met John’s boss. 

We were near Missouri at this point which was our next destination. We headed to Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal is the town where Mark Twain was born and raised. John and I planned on going on a riverboat cruise down the Mississippi River later in the evening. That didn’t end up happening but at this point in the day, we thought it was happening :). Before our planned trip down the Mississippi River, we stopped at the Mark Twain Caves which are just outside Hannibal. We bought tickets for the next tour which wouldn’t start for about an hour. There’s a winery on the premises so we walked there and John had a glass of wine.

Then it was time for the cave tour. The cave was a dry cave which is another way of saying that it wasn’t super cool inside. I mean, temperature wise it was cool. But the dryness of it meant there were no stalagmites or stalactites. So we just walked in a narrow path surrounded by walls of rock (the guide said at the outset, before we entered the cave, that if anyone suffered from claustrophobia, it may not be a good idea to go on the tour (if that gives you an idea of how narrow the path was inside)).

One thing that I really liked about visiting the cave (there are two on the premises but we just went to one of them) was that I had just finished reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I wanted to read the Adventures of Huckleburry Finn prior to going to visit John since that is Mark Twain’s most popular book (and since John and I had planned on going on a steamboat ride down the Mississippi). But I had to get on a wait list for HF while The Advenutres of Tom Sawyer was available from the library for immediate download on my Kindle.  So I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and finished it right before I left for Illinois. In the book, a cave is featured quite prominently and the cave referenced in the book is the same cave that John and I went to, the Mark Twain Cave. 

What the cave lacked in traditional natural beauty, it made up for (sort of, lol) in history. It was rumored that Jesse James used the cave to hide out in between robberies. At some point after his death, someone found Jesse James’ name written in the cave and it apparently matched other signature of JJ’s leading people to believe it was his signature and that he did, in fact, hide in the cave. For some reason, writing your name in the cave was a very popular thing to do- portions of the rocks have names all over them. Now, writing anything inside the cave is prohibited but it wasn’t for many years. 

There was a long stretch of rock that formed a seating area of sorts. Our tour guide said that many groups used this portion of the cave for meetings, especially in the summer before air conditioning. Nature provided a nice place to cool off and sit down.

Does this look like the face of a criminal??

After the cave tour we planned on going back into Hannibal and taking a dinner riverboat cruise down the Mississippi. But, we were both really tired and the cruise was two hours plus we still had an hour before we would even board. Then we had the drive back to John’s place. We decided to not do the cruise and drive back to John’s place. We ordered pizza for dinner and watched a movie. 

I left early the next morning. It was a quick trip but a good one. I was thankful that I got to spend time with my brother. 

John isn’t crazy about getting his picture taken. But one little guy didn’t complain one bit about pictures and that is John’s dog, Casey. Casey is just the cutest. We took her on several walks.