4th of July Weekend

We drove to Southern Illinois for a wedding over 4th of July weekend. It was a long drive on mostly back roads, so it was very peaceful and we saw lots of wildlife along the way. We saw turtles and armadillos, and at one point a mother deer and her two babies stood in the middle of road just staring at us in confusion as to why we were on their road. It was sweet and reminded me of how our girls will watch from the sidewalk as an unfamiliar car drives down our cul de sac, immediately recognizing something that doesn't belong there.

As we were driving in parts of Missouri and Southern Illinois we saw a lot of flooding. We were approaching a bridge as I took this photo, and this line of trees opens up into vast farmland where right now the fields are completely underwater and the water is reaching well up into the tree branches. It was sad to see this knowing the impact it will have on the farmer's crops, and made me feel even worse for other places in the country where this same flooding has submerged people's homes rather than trees and fields in the flood waters.



We were on a mission to go see the "Liberty Bell of the West" which is a very old bell, older than the actual Liberty Bell, when all of a sudden the road ahead of us was under water. From a short stretch back Dave said he thought he saw water ahead, but most of the time that's just the sun creating a glare.



As we got closer though, we could easily see that we weren't going to be getting to the bell that day. The bird perched in the water fishing seemed pretty happy though. We love driving through places we've never been and seeing whatever happens to be there. In nearby Collinsville, we could have stopped at the world's largest ketchup bottle, but it didn't quite make the cut on our list of historically significant sites...to think it was within our reach and we passed it up.

We took a bit of an indirect route through St. Louis so we could have dinner at a restaurant Dave saw on the Travel Channel, Charlie Gitto's "On the Hill." It was amazing Italian food, birthplace of the toasted ravioli and in a very cool neighborhood. Sometimes the database that Dave keeps of interesting places/restaurants comes in handy!



As we were driving, I could see this bridge from a long distance back and I was hoping we were going to go over it. Sure enough we did, and we found the funnest thing on the other side...



Directly on the other side of the river, we had landed ourselves in Chester, Illinois. The home of Popeye!



It was such a cute little town and a pleasant surprise. There were cartoon scene murals painted on many of the buildings, and statues of the characters all around town.



A lot of the signs for the stores were just like this one, and all the store fronts were reminiscent of small town America. Everything was so cute, the people were so friendly and helpful. The town hosts a Popeye Picnic every September and we would give serious thought to bringing the girls there one year!

After a quick visit in Chester, we drove through the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail where we picked up a few bottles as gifts and a couple to donate to our Foundation's auction next year.



And of course, the whole reason we were in Southern Illinois was for Barry and Amy's wedding.



I loved the grasshopper greeting the guests from the rose petal as they signed the guestbook. It was a hot, hot day, but a beautiful wedding! Congratulations, Amy and Barry!



The next morning we went hiking in the nearby Shawnee National Forest. Dave had read ahead of time how nice the paved hiking trail was. As we got there, the trail we took was fine for walking on, and we saw some beautiful rocks and lookout points over the valley, but it was clearly not paved. We were actually thinking how nice it was ~ we didn't encounter a single other person on our whole hike. As we drove out of the park, we saw a different entrance, this time to a labeled hiking trail that was the paved one Dave had read about. Leave it to us to find the path less taken...



This was taken at Cave in Rock. We were on the Illinois side, but the shoot of land that you can see on the other side of the water in the back of the photo is Kentucky. They were running a car ferry back and forth and we thought it would have been fun to try it out, but we didn't have time. We wanted to be sure to get back to Sandwich in time for the fireworks...



With these little ladies. We have one little girl who loves the fireworks, and two others who could really do without the exploding, loud noises. I'll let you guess from the pics (even though they're blurry) who is who.

Loud fireworks and all, it was a perfect night.



I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful weekend. Happy 4th of July!