Last weekend Karen and I had ourselves a little adventure. It started with a drive and a visit to Arcola, Illinois. A little burg that’s South of Urbana on Hwy 57. They have an annual festival called the Arcola Corn Broom Festival where you can get loads of things from booths, vendor food of all sorts, and yes… corn brooms. We heard of this festival, I don’t know where, and had to check it out. C’mon… a festival dedicated to corn brooms…. who could resist?
Off we went in search of a corn broom and low and behold… we found one. A lovely one. A very nice one. A red and green one. It’s cool. We love it. But that wasn’t all…
We wanted to check out the hippie memorial as well, but because of the festival there was a band playing near the memorial preventing us from getting close enough to take photos. Bummer. We will have to go back. So instead of the hippie memorial we went to plan B… we decided to go check out a place we’d seen that sells adirondack chairs in different colors. Very cool chairs. We want to get some, especially since we found out they are made of composite. Really great.
After the chairs, or really on the way to the chairs, we noticed that there were a lot of Amish around. Karen’s phrase of the day was… wow, it’s really Amishy around here. We laughed so hard after she said that. Arcola is in Illinois Amish country. It was Sunday and after church. We decided we needed a photo of the Amish. Karen tried a few times and missed. She’s a great photographer, but she needs time. She’s not a snap on the fly kind of girl, so it was a struggle. We laughed and laughed because she kept sticking the camera out the window and either not taking it in time or getting the wheel only or not taking it at all because we’d passed them. We laughed so hard we cried. We wondered aloud if the Amish might be offended by our attempts at photographing them. Here we were, a blue Volvo speeding by with a camera sticking out the window. We figured they probably were used to it and besides which, they make a lot of their money from the tourist trade in one way or another. I hope they weren’t offended.
Finally our attempts were successful. Or successful enough. We got some shots. Gotta love perseverance and a point and shoot Canon SD750.
After hunting the Amish, which sounds much worse writing it like that than is meant, we took some backroads part of the way home. Driving out in the middle of corn fields in Illinois is sort of an isolating feeling. Made more so by the fact that more than half the time you get no cell reception what so ever. Here’s hoping to never get stuck out in the middle of nowhere. We’d have to walk to a farm and ask to use the phone, like in the olden days when there were no cell phones. It’s rural… and literally in the middle of nowhere. But, it’s beautiful. Really. Quite stunning in places.
On another note, since this is my blog and I can change paddles in the middle of the stream, or whatever that saying is… we got our new living room furniture today. Yippee! I’ve included a photo just because. We still have to hang the rest of our art and such and do some painting, but it’s looking like home. It’s nice…
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