We know that he is famous, but we have to say this was a strange mish-mash of rooms and long hallways and too many steps and different levels and no flow and . . . Someone with too much money gave him free rein, and aside from some beautiful leaded glass windows, we weren't impressed. Of course, this house was built in 1902, and we are judging it by today's standards because it looks so modern. So to be fair, the design was way ahead of its time. The house was designed to entertain guests, and it includes a full-size bowling lane in that long narrow section on the left.
We were looking for some exercise, so we took an urban hike through some of the Springfield parks. We found veterans' memorials for the Vietnam, Korean, and World Wars on our hike.
As we were walking through the park, we also found this huge bunch of golden mushrooms among the manicured grass. We've never seen anything quite like that in our hikes in the wild. Mark put his big hiking boots beside the mushrooms just to show how huge these shrooms were. As pretty as they are, we have learned that some of these mushrooms are poisonous, so we should only eat those that we buy at the grocery store.
On another day, we got some exercise on a bike ride on the Sangamon Valley Trail.
We love trails where no motorized vehicles are allowed, so you don't have to watch out for car traffic. We are wondering about the size of the bicyclists that would warrant the weight limit sign on this bridge.
We had some wildlife sightings on our ride, including several deer right on the trail in front of us.
When we got to the section of the trail with hills, it seemed like a good place to turn around. We've been on enough trails to learn that if you go down that hill, you're going to have to pedal back up it on the return trip.
By the time we pedaled back through the falling leaves, we got 11 miles of exercise. It was a nice day to be outside in Illinois!
We really enjoyed our stay at the Illinois State Fair Campgrounds. With hundreds of camp sites, we're guessing they are only full during the fair. Our full hook-up 50-amp site for $20 was a bargain with it's great location. Other full-time RVers have also found this great park, and we spent some time with two of our neighbors while we were camping here. One of our neighbors told us about a great product to take away that damp smell that we get in our front-loading washing machine. A package of "Damp Rid" hung from the top of the washer with a strong magnetic hook solved our problem. We learned something new in the fairgrounds campground today!
We also enjoyed the events at the fairgrounds, like the weekly farmer's market on Thursday. But our favorite was the "Dog Agility Contest" on the weekend. We took several pictures, but the dogs were moving so fast through the obstacles that they were just a blur. We found that the smaller dogs move slower, but they are still blurry.
The trainers must also run through the course, pointing the way for the dog to know which obstacle to go through next. We both made a mental note that if we were choosing a dog for agility training, we would choose one with shorter legs so we wouldn't have to run through the course as fast!
After almost four years on the road, we are getting smarter. We learned about "Damp Rid," we finally now recognize that going uphill is harder than downhill on a bike, we know that dogs with shorter legs run through an obstacle course slower, and some mushrooms can make you sick. We also learned that after five days in Illinois's capitol city, it's time to head on down the road to new adventures!
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