Day 2

Day 2.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning. After our morning coffee and walk, we drove into the city. I had seen on the Internet, there was a street festival called Bash on Wabash. Looked like a fun time and in an area of the city we haven't seen. The south loop area. This area used to have numerous old high rise tenement type buildings, but were torn down years ago. It is now experiencing a revival being so close to Grant Park and the Loop. So we parked our car in our usual place, between Michigan Ave.and Navy Pier. It was such a nice day, we decided to walk, though that meant going all the way from the river past Millennium Park, the entire length of Grant Park plus some. But we figured, burn more calories, eat more food! Well, we arrived at the festival, and I must say, it was the lamest festival I've ever seen!

See the pic? this was it! it covered all of one block!

Yes, there was a big stage with bands, but no seating anywhere! A total of 3 food vendors with no place to sit and eat, and a handful of crappy crafts. This was a total joke! The saving grace of it all was a Mexican restaurant with an outdoor patio we passed 2 blocks before the festival. We went back there to have lunch, and it was wonderful! What a find! Skirt Steak sandwiches with tasty Sweet Potato fries. I think Craig was trying to be good by getting salad, but I went with the Chicken Tortilla soup. mmmmmm good! After eating way more than we should, we decide to walk all the way back to the magnificent mile and the Crate and Barrel store. Wabash ran parallel to Michigan only 2 blocks over, so it was a straight shot back. Then to finish off the afternoon, it was a short 10 block walk out to Navy Pier, for beer, music, and people watching. Then a few blocks back to the car, and on the road back to the campground. At our exit off the highway, there was an RV dealer. We decided to stop and see if they had a convex mirror we could try and make work till we got ours repaired, but of course, they did not. They had an entire mirror replacement assembly, but that was $165. Hope we don't have to go that route. They were also having an open house for all their units, so we wandered thru some of the mo-ho's. Fortunately for Craig, I didn't see one I liked better than ours.

And this is the kind of pic you get when someone is looking down and you sneak the camera and say CRAIG! He hates when I do that. hehehe

And more pics tomorrow!

another trip, another incident

We've just returned from another weekend trip. Safe, but not with out some problems.

Our latest trip didn't start out well. We no sooner left the house and stopped in a parking lot to double check the tie downs on the car before we hit the highway, when I discovered the bottom mirror on the drivers side mirror was gone. The top mirror looks down the road behind you, but the bottom one looks right down the side next to you. It takes care of the 'blind' spot big vehicles have. Anyway, Craig was sure we had it when we left, so we turned around and backtracked looking for it. And did we find it? Of course not. And I can't drive without it. At least I didn't want to. So I dug around the house, and found a small travel mirror I thought I could make work until we have a chance to get it repaired. It wasn't concave so it didn't cover as large of an area, but it worked well enough that I felt safe driving. So a half hour later, we were on the road again. That's why I like to leave early, in case something happens, we have time to take care of it and still arrive at our destination at a decent time. Well, that was just the beginning. 2 hrs into our drive, we heard a loud pop. That means we blew a tire. We pulled into a rest area, and sure enough, we blew the passenger side inside rear tire. At least when one of them blow, you don't lose control of the vehicle. So I called our Good Sam's emergency road service. And here I am waiting for them to arrive.

If you remember from our first trip 4 years ago, the same thing happened, only on the drivers side. Here's the poor tire.. I can't say enough good things about Good Sam's. It took about an hour for them to bring a new tire and another half hour getting the old one off, and the new one on. I could see that these tires are getting old when I compared them to the new tire. We've been trying to get as much life from these as possible because new tires would run about $350 each, and we have 7 tires including the spare. Our tires are now 8 years old. I think we've reached that limit. I think we need to bite the bullet and get new tires.We finally got on our way again, and arrived safely at our campground nearly 3 hours later than planned. That was okay, at least we arrived safe and still before dark.This trip took us to Indiana Dunes State Park. I'm sure you've noticed we stay here a lot. That's because we love Chicago! And we're only 45 min. from downtown.

I'll fill you in on the rest of the trip in my next post. Right now I need to unpack.

Happy Holiday!

Since this is a holiday weekend, and I'm sure everyone has much better things to do than read blogs, (especially mine!)this will be a quicky pic post.

Above ligularia dentana

Below, garlic chives.

And a pic of the pond with sweet potato vines taking over.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday!

funny friday

For this week's ff, I'm showing a pic of one of my compost bins. If you look closely, you'll see a very lush happy flower. I don't know the name, but I had some in a pot last year. Yes, it's an annual, and somehow survived the winter. Now in the fall I pull all the plants out of the pots and throw them in the compost bin. It somehow survived and has come up through all the stuff I've thrown in all year.

And for you non gardening people out there that can't appreciate garden humor, here's a ff just for you.........
For several years, a man was having an affair with an Italian woman.
One night, she confided in him that she was pregnant.
Not wanting to ruin his reputation or his marriage, he said he would pay her a large sum of money if she would go to Italy to secretly have the child.
If she stayed in Italy to raise the child, he would also provide child support until the child turned 18.
She agreed, but asked how he would know when the baby was born..
To keep it discreet, he told her to simply mail him a post card, and write 'Spaghetti' on the back. He would then arrange for the child support payments to begin.
One day, about 9 months later, he came home to his confused wife.
'Honey, she said, 'you received a very strange post card today.'
'Oh, just give it to me and I'll explain it later,' he said.
The wife obeyed and watched as her husband read the card, turned white, and fainted.
On the card was written:
Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.
Three with meatballs, two without.
Send extra sauce.

Have a great holiday weekend!

the flowers continue

Well, after a chilly weekend, we're finally getting a slight warm-up. The holiday weekend looks to be warm(upper 70's) and sunny. We'll be closing early Friday to enjoy the last long weekend of summer. Damn they go fast. Yesterday was a fairly lazy day. Craig vacuumed, while I did some maintenance on the mo-ho. I needed to glue some trim by the bathroom that was coming loose, and did some more caulking on the roof and windshield. I still have a leak somewhere. I'm glad it's just dripping on the dash, and not somewhere else in the mo-ho. And Craig made a delicious dinner of boneless Chicken Breasts on top of stuffing mixed with frozen Mexican vegetables, all covered with Cream of chicken soup. Yummy!
But anywho, this time of year tends to be a little lacking in the flowerbeds, but I still have lot's going on. Here's more of what's blooming in the yard.....


The above is a type of Thalictrum. I have 3, and they all bloom different times of the year. This one is the latest. Below is a pale pink Anemone. Just reaching full bloom. I have a white also, but it's just now budding up.

And below is Turtle Head. I don't know who comes up with some of these names.

And now I've got to get ready for work. I have 2 very long and busy days.