The Great Midwest Vacation

I certainly did not intend to not write a blog post for a whole week. Hubby and I have been on a wonderful vacation for the past week.  We were got away from the routine and celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. I had intentions of posting a couple of times while we were gone, but a MASSIVE rainstorm that knocked out our internet access changed those plans. More on that later.

Our vacation started before we hit the road with a drive-in movie.

I got my very own tub of popcorn. :) Hubby and I realized we had never been to a drive-in movie together. Isn't that crazy? We hope to make it to another one before the summer is over.

Last Sunday we headed over to to the great state of Wisconsin and stayed 

at a hotel with a Rubber Ducky.

Then on Monday we drove along the Mighty Mississippi (remember when you learned to spell Mississippi and were so proud of yourself?),

 

saw some pretty wildflowers,

and a real live A&W.

Our destination was NW Illinois. What's there? A little town called Galena.  It is a town full of history that began in the early 1800s as a lead mining town. It's a beautiful, hilly town with a lot of quite old buildings. We took a trolley ride around the more historical part and learned quite a bit. 

Eight Civil War generals came from there. Ulysses Grant had a home there. His parents moved there (operated a tannery) and he did too for a while. After the Civil War some business men went together and gave General Grant a home. It was basically a vacation home. He was there when he learned he won the presidency.

Grant's home.

The parlor where people came to congratulate Grant on winning the election.

President Lincoln and three Civil War Generals

This makes me very thankful for indoor plumbing. :)

Some other sights around town:

This is the Bed & Breakfast we stayed at 2 months before Megan was born. Kind of our last getaway.

We learned that it was the first house built in Galena with steam heat. (Such trivia I know!)

Galena has a very picturesque downtown street with a lot of shops. Did I take a picture of it? Of course not! It was so incredibly hot I was concentrating on getting to the next spot of shade and did not think of taking pictures. :)

It started raining Wednesday evening about 6 o'clock. And didn't stop. And didn't stop. We had a nice dinner out and were at a one man show about Mark Twain and I heard tornado sirens go off. I felt uncomfortable being on the 3rd floor, so we left. Dear Hubby ran the 2 1/2 blocks to get our car to come pick me up. The poor guy was soaked. We headed out to the golf resort (6 miles out of town) we were staying at. It was very dark out for being only 8:30 in the evening. It was raining so hard the wipers on the highest speed hardly made a difference. I noticed the ditches were almost full of water and felt sorry for the cows and horses I saw standing in the pouring rain. There was water rushing across the highway in a few places and once we got on the resort property we had to cross a low spot where water was rushing off the golf course into a lake on the other side of the road. We got to the villa we were staying at to find that the roof was leaking in a couple of places. We called the office and they told us they would let us move to another villa and someone would bring us a key. About 20 minutes later, the office called and said they weren't letting anyone leave the main lodge because two cars had been swept off the road. It happened at the same low spot we had crossed just 20-ish minutes before! God is our Protector for sure! The drip-drip-dripping slowed down and we were able to sleep that night and got moved into a dryer villa the next morning. 

Whew! That was a tense time!

(That storm knocked out the internet access for a couple of days. Thus no blog posts.)

We stayed put at the resort the next day because the flood gates to downtown Galena had been closed and the shops and restaurants were all closed. We enjoyed a lovely anniversary dinner at a resort restaurant.

I had grilled pheasant (yum!)

 And carrot cake! (Yum, yum!)

This restaurant we ate at the first night we were there was my absolute favorite:

Starting at the top left: Fried Green Tomatoes (of course!), Salad tossed with a Raspberry Vinaigrette, Amazing Bread, Lobster Ravioli (YUM!), Lasagna (Hubby's), and French Silk Ice Cream (shared).

It was a wonderful week. Not fun to come back to this small, rural town that smells like poo (see: rural).
And no nice restaurants to choose from. :(
No one brings me clean towels everyday. :(
And Hubby goes to work and leaves me all alone. :(
(Pity party has begun)