Heading west

We left Pittsburgh on Tuesday, September 1^st, just as the temperature dropped and fall arrived. Unexpectedly, it was nice to be back in the car after nearly a month in one place – we admired the hills of western Pennsylvania and a tiny corner of West Virginia, and then the countryside flattened out in Indiana and we knew we were back in the Midwest. We spent that night in Indianapolis with Fiona, a friend of mine from college, and her fiance Doug. There were fresh vegetables from their CSA box, home-brewed beer, and a nostalgic evening spent with the Millikin University yearbooks trying to remember who exactly did what when. Also, their guest-room bed is a WATERBED...I'm sure we can find a reason to go back to Indianapolis sometime...!

We continued west the next morning, after I admired the beautiful garden and fishpond one last time, and found ourselves in Champaign-Urbana, IL for lunch. We stumbled upon Seven Saints and really enjoyed it, especially since they had vegetarian substitutes for all the burger choices, Fever Tree ginger ale and a wide beer selection as well. I only got slightly lost in Champaign-Urbana – I never knew the layout of the place very well and of course it's been 14 years since I was there last – and decided against looking for the parts that I recognized in favor of taking the obvious road back to the highway. We arrived at the Starved Rock Inn around 3, had a nap, and drove down to Starved Rock State Park to look around a bit. Starved Rock is the very first place I went camping, back in 1993 (!), and I went there often with friends during college. We went up on one of the bluffs overlooking the Illinois River, found the lodge and the visitor's center, and determined that there were in fact vegetarian options for the next day before going back to our room to fall over.

The next day, we hiked. We started with 4 hours in Starved Rock, which has had a large number of boardwalks and stairs installed to preserve the sandstone. The farther away you get from the lodge, the more actual hiking on trails you can do, so we climbed all the stairs we could find and then made our way down into the canyons that are set back a little from the river. There was hardly anyone else around at that point (we congratulated ourselves several times on getting there before the Labor Day crowds) and we contemplated the mossy rocks and late-summer waterfalls in relative peace. After a short break, we headed down the road to Matthiessen State Park. I had only been here once before, in 1995, and it seemed completely different than what I remembered although that may have been only that we went a different way around the main area of the park. We didn't get to see everything – it had already been a long day – but we went down into the Lower Dell and squelched along in the mud until we got to the waterfall. All of our previous self-congratulating on our perfect timing to avoid crowds came to a halt at this point: there weren't many people there, but one of them had brought an iPod with speakers for the express purpose of blasting classic rock music during his hike. Needless to say, music carries well in a stone canyon, and we did manage to enjoy ourselves through the wailing guitars but it took a lot of deep breathing and gritted teeth not to ask this guy what the *^&$%!!! he was thinking. On the way back to the Inn we got some dinner and soothed our nerves with root beer floats, and that made everything better.

Friday morning we got ourselves on the road by 10 and headed south through fields of corn, corn, soybeans, and corn. I believe I'll skip the extended musings on industrial-scale agriculture...better writers than myself have tackled that extensively, and I (theoretically) have a whole other blog for that kind of thing. So – there was lots of corn, and then we got to Decatur. We stopped at The Old Book Barn which hasn't changed much since the last time I was there, and had lunch at Carlos O'Kelly's, where we badly confused the waiter in our attempts to find out whether there was lard in the refried beans. Hmph. We drove by Millikin...I should have spent more time there or at least parked and walked around a bit, but I really wanted to get on with the drive and I was pretty much ready to stop wallowing in nostalgia at that point. So, we drove by and headed southwest on 48 where there was – surprise! – more corn. Eventually we got into St. Louis, where we met our friend Samir and had a pleasant walk around Forest Park and part of the Washington University campus. We collected his lovely girlfriend Heather and found some excellent Ethiopian food at Meskerem, and then retreated to Samir's place for beer and an impromptu classical guitar and Irish music performance at midnight or so. About 4 hours later, we were woken up by lightning flashes and a stupendous thunderstorm...we didn't get much sleep, but we did say before we left that we were hoping for some really good thunderstorms along the way...be careful what you wish for.

Finally, it was Saturday and time to head for Tulsa. We had brunch at Momo's and got back to Samir's just as the rain stopped, so we loaded up the car without getting soaked and pointed ourselves southwest once again. We arrived around 6:30, my dad had made his amazing shrimp creole for dinner, and we prepared once again to get into a nice productive routine. We'll be in Tulsa until early October...