More pictures from our trip to Illinois.

Notes from the rest of the trip up until the conclusion which just happened a few minutes ago since we arrived home. Notes in no particular order, no rhyme and no reason.

A lot of fun can be had standing next to you sons while you all dry your hands in the hand-dryer - blowers in restrooms. They have some really powerful dryers these days.

Six Flags St. Louis is superior to Six Flags Over Texas in these ways:

It was much cleaner.
Better organized so that getting from one area to the next is simpler. At least, for me.
Very clean restrooms that did not stink, and this is my last restroom comment.

The rides were similar in many ways. Both have Superman and Batman and Mr. Freeze and a mine train. St. Louis had more rollercoasters. But it had more performers that roamed around the park doing their thing. They did have, like the one in Texas, some singer from High
School Musical who I have never heard of singing to a bunch screaming pre-teen girls.

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We stayed at a Days Inn in Eureka, Missouri, because it was close to the park, cheap ($53), and had a pool. The pool was indoors in what they called a Fundome. In our family ranking, Leslie gave it a four, that high only because it was cheap. I gave it about a six because I know what I should get for $53. There is a difference. Marks against the Days Inn because it was not that clean, the pool/Fundome made everything smell like mold, the motel is one where they do not have fitted sheets so they try to stretch a sheet that I think is too small over a bed a little bit bigger the result being that the sheet never stays on meaning that one is sleeping on the bare mattress by 1:00 am.

Central Missouri advertises itself as the a World Famous Pan Fried Chicken area.

There are three universities in Springfield, Missouri and the original Bass Pro Shop.

I have been to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Philadelphia, Denver, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, San Diego, and a lot of other larger cities. Chicago, as a city, was the prettiest. Great location - on a lake, great parks, great architecture that even an architecture idiot like me could appreciate. It was easy to navigate, even to drive around the busiest sections of the city. By the way, in any category, Houston is last.

It is a little strange arriving home from trips. Everyone has been together for several days, sleeping in the same room, visiting everywhere together, and then when home everyone sort of feels weird not being in the same room.

Things Learned Today:

1. The Field Museum of Natural History is huge. We spent five hours there today and saw every area but admittedly passed through a couple of exhibits quickly. Favorites were the dinosaurs and the American Indian exhibits.

2. Taxis run up $ quickly. A short ride, under a mile, cost us about $11.00 + tip.

3. When waiting on, depending on, a free trolley to get back to your hotel, it is important to know when the trolleys quit running.

4. There are dangerous areas of Chicago.

5. Chicago is strongly Obama territory.

6. Lincoln Park is a great area of Chicago that runs along Lake Michigan. Tons of runners, boats anchored in the lake, hundreds, I mean hundreds, playing volleyball on the beach there.

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On the agenda tomorrow is the Shedd Museum.

We drove around a little this evening, actually getting rather wonderfully lost, and have started considering the Lincoln Park Zoo. It is free and in a beautiful area. Tomorrow, due to a great friend in Keller, we will have our season passes to Six Flags. She sent them Fedex today. It is an amazing thing that someone can mail something in Texas on Monday, and it can be delivered to this hotel the next day. So, Six Flags Over Great America is now an option for fun before we leave.

Chicago.

We awoke and visited the Parkview Church of Christ. Usually, we meet someone we know or someone who knows someone we know. Not this time.

Afterwards, we headed the 2.5 hours or so to Chicago. I was a little anxious about navigating Chicago, finding the hotel, finding a parking spot, etc. Arriving, we drove down Lake Shore Drive for a little so that I could show the family a couple of spots that we will visit. Found those easily. Then good fortune. Found the hotel and the hotel had parking, for a price, but convenient. The hotel has a great roof-top swimming pool, and we are located on Michigan Avenue right across from Grant Park.

Tonight we ate at Giardano's Pizza. Really good thin pizza. Famous, they say.

Tomorrow, we will visit the Field Museum of Natural History. After that, who knows?

For anyone interested in presidential history, A. Lincoln, or simply U.S. history, Springfield should be high on your list of stops.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library opened in 2005, and it was a great day at a great place. There were two superb video presentations, a gallery of objects that belonged to the Lincolns, a large area with voice presentations and displays of how Lincoln was depicted in the media of the day, a picture gallery of the Civil War along with a multi-media presentation on the Civil War that showed the whole war in four minutes which was just long enough for the kids to be pay really close attention. There was information on his assassination and long goodbye which included ten funerals in ten different cities. And much more including the necessary store.

We also visited his home, the only one he owned, in a neighborhood which is preserved just as it was as is his house. There was a great visitor center operated by the National Park Service which made me wonder if graduates when applying for employment with the NPS can designate whether they would like to work at a historical site or a natural site. The people working at a historical site might not want to hike into the Grand Canyon everyday looking for fat hikers nor perhaps would the Grand Canyon worker want to talk about the parlor of a president's house.

Also visited his tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetary where he is buried with his wife and three of his four sons. One is buried in Arlington cemetery, and he is the only one to live to adulthood.

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Obviously, we visited the Chatham Jaycess Sweet Corn Festival.

It is July 18th. 8:42 pm as I sit in the lobby of the Howard Johnson's motel in Springfield, Illinois. We left Keller, Texas, this morning at 5:39 headed here for a little vacation. Originally this was to be a two week affair, but I have shortened it for a confluence of reasons.

Here in Springfield we will visit Lincoln stuff - his grave, his home, his office, and his library and presidential museum. Might stop by the corn festival taking place in Chatham, about 10 miles from here. Good sweet corn cooked on a grill sounds good.

Here is a good motel description: find a motel on sidestep.com for 53.00 a night with two double beds, no smoking room, on the first floor, right next to the pool, that is secluded so our three kids are the only ones in the pool. Already struck up a conversation with the housekeeping lady, a delightful lady who already offered multiple towels and little bottles of shampoo. Yes, the door to the bathroom sticks and the toilet sounds as if the air around it is being sucked into a vortex or something similar to that whirlpool thing on Land of the Lost, but it is $53.00.

After Springfield tomorrow, and maybe the corn festival, we will find a church for Sunday and then head to Chicago. Didn't quite find as good a deal in the city, but we are on Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park.

Will let you know about the Lincoln and corn experience tomorrow.

Pictures from our visit to Daingerfield to see my parents.

Teach children to take the smallest piece of pie, the smallest portion of any food served. If serving themselves, take a small spoonful. And that girls go first.

Tonight, four couples sat around a table in an Italian restaurant and had pizza, pasta, and dessert. We were blessed to be one of the couples.

I sat there rather quiet for the most part thinking to myself that it was a strange set of events that preceded this evening's gathering.

First, one couple moves to Keller, Texas, due to a change, an opportunity, for different work.
The second couple, us, move to Keller, Texas, due to an opportunity for different work.
The third couple moves to Keller, Texas, due to work.

Once there was a time when I didn't know where Keller was.

All friends before. All from the same town, the same church, some affiliation to the same university. Each family has children approximately the same age. In fact, the three women were pregnant at the same time, the spring of the year 1994.

I just stared at the faces and heard the laughter and listened to the stories. Wonderful.

I promised Leslie that I would write on this blog everyday until this coming Saturday.

The letter of the law.

Sharing meals with friends is one of the best things about this world.

Tonight, three families met at one of the homes and had spaghetti, green beans, great bread, salad with toasted almonds, strawberries, and spinach. Homemade sugar cookies.

We laughed. Talked of past things, or sad things that seem to have been amongst common friends at a place that is common to all of us. And we talked of wonderful things.

Our children - 8 of the 10 - ran through the house hiding from each other, played in the water form the hose on the trampoline. They ate, but barely, because they so wanted to get to playing, and that was just fine.

What was interesting to me tonight was that three of the children stayed at the table and listened to the adults talk. It is strange to me that our oldest, along with two of the oldest from another family, want to sit and listen. I wonder if long years from now they will remember sitting around the table as their parents visited late into the night. I want them to see the amazing relief and joy that is found within close, long-time friendships.

We are watching the original HBO series on John Adams. We made a rash purchase of the DVD set and are "requiring" all of the family to watch it. Leslie and I are pumped about it due to a natural and shared interest in things historical particularly United States presidential history and because both of us read the book about Adams by David McCullough.

Jeb and Erin have to some things explained to them since the language is a little different than what is commonly used in our household. Stupendously different.

Caleb watches silently. Possibly just bearing it until the conclusion of the required viewing. However, perhaps he will remember the learned history when he is older and a professor of history at some university. Although, he might equally be put off by early American history due totally to our persisting in such a practice.

Before the reading of the book, I viewed John Adams and an "intermission" in the presidency between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, a sort of Jimmy Carter between Jerry Ford and Ronald Reagan. Through McCullough's writing and some reading hence, it is clearer now of his part in our country's beginning.

An interesting note in history is that he and Jefferson both died the same day, July 4th, each thinking that the cause of liberty was in good hands since the other still lived not knowing that the other had, in fact, died that very day.

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Chess has no appeal.

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We are pondering a trip toward Illinois later this summer. Many of you know that we like to take trips. Car trips. Not on interstates. Stopping when we see something that we want to check out.

We have gone west most often although there have been trips to the east. As a family, we have never headed north past southern Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota which I say is in the west anyway.

North would get us a couple of new states. Iowa and Illinois. It would also get us a couple of more presidential museums/libraries. There is Herbert Hoover's in Iowa, some small town. There is also Abraham Lincoln's in Springfield, Illinois, along with where he lived, where he had an office.

Then on to Chicago. I checked a book out of the library about Chicago, and it seems that there are many things to see and do. A big city would be a new destination for us. Navy Pier, Wrigley Field, Magnificent Mile, Lake Michigan, University of Chicago, Sears Tower, John Hancock Observation Deck, some ethnic neighborhoods to explore.

In the meantime, above is a picture from the Grand Canyon.

Pictures from Sedona.

Sedona, Arizona.

This past week, we spent four nights in Sedona with our friends the Auvermanns from Amarillo, Texas - Brent, Jennifer, Samuel, Silas, and Isaac.

I wanted to go there because I had heard that it was a beautiful spot, it was close enough for a visit, and because I had never been. And there is something refreshing about going west in the summer.

We found that Sedona was beautiful. Sedona, the town, is a much smaller Santa Fe having a strong tilt to the arts, expensive art, and the new age thinking exhibited in crystals and psychics and indian flute music playing everywhere and palm readers and mind readers and all natural everything and....

what is referred to as the Vortex. Here is what I can tell you about the Vortex. The reasoning is that all of us are obviously living things and the earth is a living thing as is all of nature. Subsequently, just as some humans are healthier than others, some trees are healthier than others, some rivers are healthier than others, then some areas of the earth are healthier than others. According to some of the locals, Sedona is a very healthy place on earth. However, it seemed taking advantage of the Vortex involved more than just being in Sedona since there were certain individuals who were enterprising enough and needed to help you get in touch with the Vortex, intercept the Vortex, channel it, speak to it, have it speak to you, just be in the Vortex.

We visited Slide Rock State Park which was located on a very scenic byway known on the map as Hwy 89A but in name as the Oak Creek Canyon road. It was absolutely scenic.

The park is located along Oak Creek which tumbles over rocks in the park creating several "slides" for people to enjoy and many smaller waterfalls. We were there with several hundred other folks but it didn't seem crowded because there were so many places to sit, play and from which to jump into the water.

Near our first stop, there was a 12 foot jump off of a cliff and all of us took the jump into water that literally took one's breath away due to the cold. The kids took several jumps loving the feeling and the conquering of a fear.

On our way out, we decided to see the creek and canyon on the other side of the bridge. Walking under it, we found several teenagers and college students jumping off a cliff that Brent and I estimated to be - too high. But there was a 30 foot cliff just a few steps away where others were jumping from. We all sat and watched people approach both sites, some getting the courage to jump and others backing away.

I motioned to Jeb, our 7 year old, asking him, jokingly, if he wanted to jump in from there. He smiled hugely and with his face asked if I was serious. I said that I wasn't. But then I climbed down a back way and got in the water at the bottom of the cliff just to see what the water and depth was like. It was good.

In short time, Jeb had his shirt off and sprinted off of the cliff with a terrified and thrilled look on his face. He was followed by all of the kids although some needed more preparation time than others.

Our second day was spent at the Grand Canyon. We hiked the rim trail, ate a picnic lunch under some trees, had some ice cream from near the Bright Angel Lodge and were awed by it again.
That night we spent a couple of hours at the heated pool. The kids loved the pool, splashing from the pool to the hottub and back. They were worn out at the end of this and all days due to our ending all of our days diving for little torpedoes thrown by the adults.

Our last day there was spent relaxing and visiting and making some runs to Circle K for 44 oz Diet Cokes, tea, and diet Dr. Pepper. We also visited some local shops.

We started the last morning at 5:30 local time and arrived back in Amarillo, at the home of the Auvermanns, at about 6:00 pm for more visiting and so Leslie and Jennifer could work on making glass pendants made with soldering irons. The guys watched some baseball and Mythbusters on the Discovery channel.

Now, we are home. We love home. Photos to come. We currently are unable to locate the appropriate cord.
Peace Out.