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Southern
Illinois Road Trip Ooh, another road trip! This time I am going through the area of Southern Illinois. My hosts and two friends of theirs, Heather and James, decided to drive through the area to see some of the lovely fall colors and to get away from town for a couple of days. They certainly picked a very quiet area. I loved it! Here I am with my new traveling friend, Ratzo. |
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| It's a bit obscured by trees, but this is where we spent the weekend. It is the Old Bethlehem School Cottage, which was a working one-room schoolhouse until the mid 1950s. It has three bedrooms, a full kitchen, and a living room. It is also very remote, so it is a great place for a weekend getaway. |
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| At the school cottage, you can pay to have your breakfast made for you, or you can do it yourself. James was our cook, and he made these lovely pancakes. I am just about to dive into this fantastic maple syrup-covered meal. Yum! |
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| In this picture, the school cottage is in the background. The building to the right of it is another cottage the owners rent out on occasion. I took the opportunity to sit a chair and watch the gorgeous countryside for a while. It really was very quiet and beautiful. |
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| We had lunch from Subway at a picnic area in the Giant City State Park. The scenery was fantastic and the fall colors have really come out since I'd poked my head outside a week or so ago. |
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| The jumbled stones behind me are part of a several hundred foot-long wall built by Native Americans between A.D. 600-900. Nearly a dozen of these walls are found across southern Illinois. No one knows what they were used for, but since no evidence of warfare has been found nearby, it is doubtful they were defensive structures. It's possible they were ceremonial or perhaps they demarcated neutral territory for trading and negotiating. |
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| This big smiley face is on the watertower at Makanda, Illinois (population 423). It seemed so happy I just had to have my picture taken with it. |
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