Hays Days and Kell

We've talked about doing it for a while & finally just did it! We threw overnight stuff in a bag & headed to southern Illinois. The goal was pretty vague - see if we could find my families old haunts.
.
I'm fairly confident we did find my grandparents house from when I was a kid in Kell. But I didn't get a great forward shot of it - because Darwin was like, "Hurry up , this is a small town and they are not going to take kindly to strangers taking pictures."!!


And Darwin has an amazing memory for directions! He had no problem at all finding Dad's property & he had only seen it once...I think it was when we were down there for Grandpa's funeral.
.
The land is off of a local road down there - here is the look that I remember when Dad showed it to us back then. Trees and power lines.

Then Darwin drives very slowly & says, "And if I remember right - there's an access road somewhere along here that goes back to the property."

.

And sure enough - there it was, completely grown over, but if you looked carefully - you could see it. Darwin put it in 4 wheel drive and started back.

.

With all the rain - I was a "little" (ok - more then a little) freaked out!! I could so see us getting stuck out there in the middle of nowhere!!!

.

There was drainage ditch to the right - trees to the left & a completely covered, potholed, pitted, "road" we were bumping up and down on at 2 miles an hour!!

.

Then he got to some extremely tall "weeds" & I said - just stop here!! You really couldn't tell at that point if the road even continued.

.

So - I got out, walked very gingerly through the first part of the weeds, then could go no further.

.

Then I just put my camera up above my head and took a series of pictures panning from left to right.

Then we backed out to a point that he could do the back and forth 629 times until he got hte truck pointed back out!

We couldn't find the old homestead & we couldn't find the tree that my Dad loved to show everyone when they visited.

It has made me want to go back down sometime with family to see if we can get pictures of other haunts!

Too bad it won't be with my Dad.....

Blast from the Past

Sinclair Gas!! Brings back memories!!

What a way to end the day

Crunch........well after the train ride, we decided to go downtown Dells to look for t-shirts. We had to park up a hill from the store we wanted to go into & walked down the hill to the store (Tim stayed in the van playing DS - he was getting pretty close to the end of his pleasantries...)
.
While we are in the store - Amie begins to get to the end of her pleasantries too!! So, Amie and I headed back to the van with the plan to bring it down and pick up Grandma at the corner.
.
Well - we had to go the opposite direction and turn around in a parking lot & then head down the hill. At the bottom of the hill, parking ended (it was pull in parking at an angle on both sides) & the right hand side of the road split to two lands (turn right or turn left).
.
Since I didn't want to turn either way - but just wanted to pull over to the side to wait for Grandma - I thought, "I'll just pull in close to the end here and hopefully I'll be out of the way that people can still get around me and into the turn lane" --- well I was so worried about making sure I wasn't sticking out into the lane, that I forgot to pay attention to the backend of the van & caught the back door hinge of Betty's van on the rear bumper of the car I was trying to hug up next to!!
.
This is the car I hit. Once it got caught - I stopped and then backed out - it made grinding noise both directions. :(
.
I got out and looked at the other vehicle & a kid probably about 12 years old starts yelling, "I saw you hit that car. I saw you hit that car" - I'm thinking - "So did I"!!
.
Anyway - as I'm looking it over - Betty comes out. I took pictures of both vehicles and put my contact information on a note (actually a torn piece of the Thomas the Train box) and put it under the wiper blade.
.
In Illinois - I've been hit before (this is the first time I've hit a vehicle) & the police have always said, "if no one is hurt - just exchange information".....well I forgot I wasn't in Illinois!



And here's Betty's van - the other vehicle definitely got the brunt of the damage.

Instead of the owner calling me - they called the police. I received a phone call that started with. "Did you hit a vehicle?" "Yes" "So what was your emergency that you didn't report it to the police and stay at the scene?"

.

I was astonished!!! I never gave it a thought that it would be a difference!! At the end of the interview - he informed me that because I was being cooperative he wouldn't site me, but I could have been sited for failing to make a police report and failing to remain at the scene of the accident!!

.

Sucks!!!

Teany Tiny Train!

So on our last full day of vacation - we thought we'd ride the Dells Train....little did we know - it wasn't a regular train - but a zoo sized train!!
.
And what we also didn't know it was run by a group of dedicated train enthusiasts that spend their blood, sweat and tears keeping this little train running and educating people on the history of the steam trains & their enthusiasm shows in their style, talk and performance!
.
I could so see my Grandpa sitting on the engine of this little train - telling his stories and enjoying the people he would meet while he talked!


And the title of this post is generously provided by Amie.....Since she saw Despicable Me - she runs around with the villians voice saying, "It's a teany tiny toilet" - or anything else that is tiny!
.
And away we go!

Amie does not like the whistle blowing!

Just thought that tree was interesting - dead and yet still strong enough to hold itself up like that.

When we arrived at the "end" of the route - we all got out & the engineer and conductor turned the train the old fashion way - explaining what and how the engine works.

On our way back to the station we saw a little doe in the woods - not a great picture though.

And now because of this train ride - Amie is in love with Thomas the Train!! :) We'll see how long that will last - but it's cute for now!!

Grandma's Pancake Quake!!

On Friday 16th - we were trying to figure out where we hadn't gone for breakfast. Grandma found an ad for a pancake place on Dells Parkway.....she saw the "banana split pancake" & it certainly sounded interesting!
.
Here it is!!!!! It had pancakes & then the ice cream and toppings on top of the pancakes!!


Tim's chocolate chip pancakes looked pretty tasty too!

And Amie stole Grandma's Cherry topping!

A HUGE sugary start to our day!!

Thursday morning with Amie

So this picture didn't turn out - but what it was supposed to show was Miss Amie picking up her flip flops with her toes, putting them on, knocking them off and doing it all over again! She's got monkey toes!! She loves to pick things up with her toes!!
.
But then again - so do I!! :)

More Amie faces!! We went to Camp Critter for breakfast & she was making some of her faces while we were waiting!!

After breakfast - I snapped a couple of pictures of part of our resort - this is from the vantage of a bridge that crosses from one part of the resort to the other. Very serene on the bridge! And they have piped in birds tweeting - very nice!