a short weekend in the UP

We're in Escanaba, but not for much longer.  Conrad came up on Wednesday.  Me, I took a red eye, and I made it here on Friday.  Super tired, but worth it for Karen's 70th birthday.  And in the blink of an eye, it's time to go home.  A very short trip indeed.

I love cool and even cold weather, but I don't know how to deal with it any longer.  I did bring layers with me, but the wind is so cold, and the lows in the 40s are shocking to me this time.  Brrrrr.  It's embarrassing, but there you are.  I guess fall is here!

Conrad's hometown remains as inscrutable to me as ever.  I grew up in a small town, and yet, I cannot relate.  I go to Starbucks or restaurants, and I just don't get it here.  It's small town, hunters and Trumpers, and it's so foreign to me.  Ah well.  We've eaten heartily (including on our drive down to Little Suamico),

walked a little (around the nearby community college campus),

and celebrated Karen.  It's all gone quickly, and it was a nice time.

Autumn paints the town

The darn thing is, it was really lovely and sunny, clear blue skies through the workday. On the way home? Not so much. Perhaps tomorrow, if the sky cooperates, I'll try for a few additional shots of fall colours in Chicago. Ah, sweater weather, I love it...

passing of time

It's a melancholy time of year: the days shorten, sunrise is later. I now get up most workdays before sunrise. A few days ago I slept in (relatively speaking) and caught this a little after 6 AM.



The passing of time. Of course, on the other hand, it does mean it's now less than 11 weeks until Christmas.

Peoria

My confession: in 9 years (and a bit) in Illinois, I've so seldom ventured outside of Chicago that I haven't yet seen most of the larger regional centers, including the state capital, Springfield. This week I took a baby step forward, spending Thursday night in Peoria.

I can't comment on Peoria quite so much and favourably as I did on South Bend a couple of weeks ago. The weather, for one, was kind of lousy. Grey, wet, cool, misty. The city sits overlooking the Illinois River, yet the afternoon RAS and I arrived, we could barely tell there was a river below the bluffs. We did take a nice drive through a swanky neighbourhood, but given conditions, real estate porn shots weren't going to happen. We also left fairly quickly after our presentation Friday morning, so we didn't explore very far then either.

A few things I noted:

There are hills, landscape, texture, colour. I think on a crisp, clear fall day with the leaves turning, it must be gorgeous.

The downtown needs an infusion of life and businesses.


There are offices downtown, but few services and amenities. A metro area on 350,000 and no Starbucks (or other chain) in the downtown core? Odd, and on a morning when it was damp and cold and we really wanted coffee, it was more than just odd. It became a little desperate. We found a Starbucks up near Bradley University.


Driving there from Chicago is nicer than the drive to Urbana (and the stop for lunch at a smalltown BK was priceless for the self-serve soda fountain with suggested pop-food pairings). Not so flat, not so much a dull, straight landscape of corn fields (though, as you can see, we passed between cornfields coming and going).
Even on a gloomy day, it wasn't bad, perhaps because it was new to me and perhaps because I had RAS for company.

I hope to get back to Peoria one day, in fact. Always good to see the rest of the state. May it not take me until 2018 so to do!

quick shots: autumn in the UP

Somehow we're managing to freeload some wireless service here at Conrad's Mom's place. I'm not questioning how, nor am I complaining. I'm just going to quickly post some photos of autumn foliage in the UP. On our drive up to Marquette and thereabouts today, with Conrad's sister Karen, we saw some brilliant autumn colours splashed in among the green. The farther north we went, the hillier and more autumnal the scenery was. What a pity that taking photos from the back seat of a moving car doesn't do it all much justice. Ah well.

For tonight: fall in the Upper Peninsula. Good night!