Saturday, July 25, 2015
Lake Storey
We tried to go to a balloon festival tonight at Lake Storey, a reservoir near Galesburg, IL. Unfortunately, some evening showers wound up canceling the evening balloon glow, but the lake itself was scenic. Katie took some of these pictures, too. She was so cute visualizing/lining up the shots
Thursday, July 16, 2015
A fair time
We have been doing science demos at the Heart of Illinois Fair this week. The times we worked were not real busy, but we enjoyed the funnel cakes and elephant ears and enjoyed watching the Axe Women of Maine lumberjill show. Tonight there were tornado warnings in the area and we spent time in the basement, but the heaviest damage was over by Galesburg. Storms to the north of us on Monday produced a cool sunset.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Wisconsin Trip With Kris
Kristine
celebrated her 16th birthday belatedly by visiting her grandparents in
Mountain, WI, over the weekend. She was accompanied by three other
16-year-olds. Everybody had a good time, visiting places in the Green Bay area like Bay Beach
Park, the Wildlife Sanctuary, and Happy Joes Pizza, and
doing activities in the Mountain area like climbing the "big rock" behind my parents
house, floating the Oconto River, and having campfires.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Black Hills Trip - Days 3 and 4
Saturday into Sunday we stayed at smoking room in a Motel 6 with a greenish swimming pool in Rapid City - not our favorite hotel ever. After Mass, we visited:
- Dinosaur Park - fun to see the old statues. There is a visitors center there now but we did not have time to see it.
- Wind Cave National Park - every cave has its own personality, and this breathing cave is known for its "boxwork" (calcite veins that had formed in a latticework pattern and then left freestanding as the matrix rock dissolved away). We saw bison and prairie dogs in the park, but I could not get a good picture of them.
The skies opened up with a deluge not long after we left the cave, and Karen drove from the park back to Murdo, SD. On Monday, we headed back to Peoria. We passed through a few rainstorms, and I am convinced I saw a cloud sporting a small horizontal twisted horn-like structure (what that means I do not know). The highlight of the return for me was a stop at the falls in Sioux Falls, SD. A pretty spot, and I thought it was interesting when the wind whipped the foam at the base of the falls into foam ball devils. We returned the rental car to the airport in Peoria with about 2 hours to spare. The trip was about 2000 miles; if we had more time and cash we might have gone further and done more, but I am very thankful for the opportunity to do this trip. I have been to the Black Hills now in 1982 (summer after 7th grade), 1993 (honeymoon), 2004 (trip to Seattle for a sabbatical), and now 2015. Looks like I need to set aside 2026 to maintain the 11-year intervals!
- Dinosaur Park - fun to see the old statues. There is a visitors center there now but we did not have time to see it.
- Wind Cave National Park - every cave has its own personality, and this breathing cave is known for its "boxwork" (calcite veins that had formed in a latticework pattern and then left freestanding as the matrix rock dissolved away). We saw bison and prairie dogs in the park, but I could not get a good picture of them.
The skies opened up with a deluge not long after we left the cave, and Karen drove from the park back to Murdo, SD. On Monday, we headed back to Peoria. We passed through a few rainstorms, and I am convinced I saw a cloud sporting a small horizontal twisted horn-like structure (what that means I do not know). The highlight of the return for me was a stop at the falls in Sioux Falls, SD. A pretty spot, and I thought it was interesting when the wind whipped the foam at the base of the falls into foam ball devils. We returned the rental car to the airport in Peoria with about 2 hours to spare. The trip was about 2000 miles; if we had more time and cash we might have gone further and done more, but I am very thankful for the opportunity to do this trip. I have been to the Black Hills now in 1982 (summer after 7th grade), 1993 (honeymoon), 2004 (trip to Seattle for a sabbatical), and now 2015. Looks like I need to set aside 2026 to maintain the 11-year intervals!
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Black Hills Trip - Day 2
The Fourth of July was a crazy fun, marathon to tourism for us. We visited:
- Wall Drug - a silly tourist trap
- Storybook Island - Katie was on the edge of being too old to enjoy this park, but we are glad she had the opportunity to go
- Crazy Horse Monument - the builders still have a long way to go, but what they have looked nice, and we enjoyed the bus ride to get close to the mountain
- Mt. Rushmore - this was my highest visit priority on this trip and we stayed there from late afternoon until the mountain lighting ceremony that night (they didn't do fireworks due to the forest fire hazard). The overall park location was smaller than what Karen and thought it would be, but the weather cooperated.
One sight I could not capture on film: leaving Mt. Rushmore and descending out of the Black Hills into Rapid City at right and watching a distant big thunderstorm lighting up the sky and seeing lots of fireworks displays going off around the city.
- Wall Drug - a silly tourist trap
- Storybook Island - Katie was on the edge of being too old to enjoy this park, but we are glad she had the opportunity to go
- Crazy Horse Monument - the builders still have a long way to go, but what they have looked nice, and we enjoyed the bus ride to get close to the mountain
- Mt. Rushmore - this was my highest visit priority on this trip and we stayed there from late afternoon until the mountain lighting ceremony that night (they didn't do fireworks due to the forest fire hazard). The overall park location was smaller than what Karen and thought it would be, but the weather cooperated.
One sight I could not capture on film: leaving Mt. Rushmore and descending out of the Black Hills into Rapid City at right and watching a distant big thunderstorm lighting up the sky and seeing lots of fireworks displays going off around the city.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Black HillsTrip - Day 1
The family and I did a four-day Fourth of July weekend trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota this past weekend. We picked up the rental car on Thursday night and left at about 7 on Friday morning. We stopped at:
-the Iowa 80 truck stop
-a place near Albert Lea, MN, that had Viking statues
-the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, MN
-the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD
-an overlook of the Missouri River near Chamberlain, SD
-Murdo, SD, where we stopped for the night.
A couple other things:
-We watched/listened to all six Star Wars movies (in order 4,5,1,2,3,6) throughout the entire trip. The best part was watching the surprise on Katie's face when she found out Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father.
- The skies were a bit creepy at times throughout the trip. Smoke from wildfires in Canada were blowing southward toward the U.S. and making hazy skies and reddish suns and moons. The reddish sun over the (very green) emptiness of western South Dakota was disconcerting sometimes.
-the Iowa 80 truck stop
-a place near Albert Lea, MN, that had Viking statues
-the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, MN
-the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD
-an overlook of the Missouri River near Chamberlain, SD
-Murdo, SD, where we stopped for the night.
A couple other things:
-We watched/listened to all six Star Wars movies (in order 4,5,1,2,3,6) throughout the entire trip. The best part was watching the surprise on Katie's face when she found out Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father.
- The skies were a bit creepy at times throughout the trip. Smoke from wildfires in Canada were blowing southward toward the U.S. and making hazy skies and reddish suns and moons. The reddish sun over the (very green) emptiness of western South Dakota was disconcerting sometimes.
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