Spring Break 2010

This is the second year Sarah has gone on the high school youth group work tour for our church. Last year was her first year and she didn't really want to go. She had never really bonded with any of the kids at our church and because she works at a babysitting job on Wednesday nights she had never gotten really involved in the youth group. But we'd been told by many other parents that going on work tour had changed their teens' attitude about church, themselves and youth group and it was worth the effort to make her go at least once. So we pushed and she went. She did come home with a completely different attitude toward youth group and work tour in particular. She still doesn't get to participate in the weekly meetings as often as she'd like but she's made friends and does participate as much as she can. She also started looking forward to this years spring break trip about 6 hours after returning from last years trip!

With her gone for a week Emma and I are once again on our own. Last year we booked a couple nights at an indoor water park resort north of Chicago. It was great having some time together without Dad and Sarah. Being the youngest she and I don't get a lot of just Mom and Daughter time together. This year we hadn't really planned anything ahead of time.

Sunday night we were just hanging out watching television and talking. Because the weather forecast was so good I thought an outdoor adventure was a good idea. Many people have been telling me for 18 years that Starved Rock was a great place to see but I'd never gotten down there. I got online and when I realized that it was less than a 2 hour drive from here and practically on the way to my niece in Iowa's I had a plan. We would spend a day or so hiking and then drive to Iowa to see our new cousin/niece. Steve looked up rooms available in the area and we had a room booked for Monday night using his many Marriott points.


We headed out Monday morning and were hiking by noon. We hiked for almost 4 hours the first day. The weather was perfect. Just hearing Emma exclaim over and over, "this is awesome!" "I love this place!" "OMG, look at that!" made every sore muscle worth it. After all our hiking we headed back to Peru and our hotel for some rest. After a game of Phase 10 and a change of clothes we headed across the parking lot to Target to buy bathing suits because we didn't think to pack any and then to Red Lobster for dinner. We enjoyed a great meal of "Chum Stuffed Fungi" (stuffed mushrooms) and crab legs and I had one of those ginormous Lobsteritas, the waitress was all, "You know that drink is huge right?" I was like, "You've never met me but trust me, it'll be fine. Plus I only have to get about 100 yards to the hotel."

We ended the evening with an hour in the hotel pool and hot tub. Even though it was spring break we didn't have to share the pool with anyone. I guess Peru, Illinois isn't on the top 100 list of spring break destinations.

The next morning we headed back to the park to hike to a couple of canyons we'd missed the day before. We were sore and tired but we had looked online the night before at photos taken in these canyons and felt the extra hiking was worth the effort. It paid off. The first canyon we hiked to that morning was the LaSalle Canyon and we were the first ones back there that morning.

It was so beautiful and peaceful, like a natural cathedral. I'm glad we hadn't made it that far the day before because we would have been too tired to enjoy it and there would have been a bunch of other people there too.

We then made a quick stop at the Lodge for a potty break and ice cream cones. I learned that hiking around waterfalls when you have to pee is really uncomfortable! Our last hike was to the St. Louis Canyon where the tallest waterfall in the park can be found. Again, definitely worth the hike.

I took almost 100 pictures during the 24 hours we were there. You can see most of them on my Flickr page

I'm now looking into selling my super 100-300mm zoom lens and buying a 14mm wide angle and the fast 50mm that I've always dreamed of and heading back down there as the seasons change. You can bet Emma will be joining me for many more of these trips as well. I'm looking forward to it, I have been since about 6 hours after we got home last night!