Katherine’s Spot

After our enjoyable morning at the cardbord cup regatta, the four of us (brother, cousin, uncle and I) headed back to the house for a quick lunch.  Then we set off again for the afternoon.  We drove to the nearby town of Barrington to take pictures of a bunch of painted horses.  Yes, we really did!  And it was fun. :-)  The horses are a temporary thing, placed in random spots around town. 

We parked at the library and started walking.  The first two horses were right next to the library.

This one is covered with faces.

This is my cousin’s face on the other side of a “modern art” sculpture which was near the horse.

Another nearby piece of ”modern art…”  Its name is “The Debate.”  So, my brother and cousin decided to debate.  Whoever made “The Debate” apparently didn’t know how to build chairs.

I strolled nonchalantly over to the library and was almost trampled by another horse, this one a little more energetic than the first horse we had seen.

After I recovered from that fright, we walked a little farther and came upon another piece of modern art.  This one looked like…I don’t know…something off of that pixar robot movie…

I saw this cool car.

We also found a spot with some pretty flowers.

We kept walking to find more horses.  Here is one welcoming you to the town of Barrington.  It apparently grew some extra legs…

And this one is dreaming about a bowling alley…for some reason.

“That’s the problem with these city benches…”

We then walked back to where the car was parked, and drove off to find some more horses.  First, of course, we stopped to take a picture of another piece of “modern art.”  I have no clue what this is supposed to be. 

“That’s the second strangest piece of modern art I’ve ever seen!”

(If you are my uncle, you are probably laughing right about now at the above comment.)

We drove farther downtown, parked, and started walking again.

More horses:

Notice the earbuds and ipod on this next horse…

We also stopped at a memoral plaque and two rather stiff lookng statues; we couldn’t resist having our picture taken with them.

A horse with fox hunting painted on its side…

We also saw a train which had apparently run through a building…

My favorite picture from the  afternoon:

Saturday morning my brother, uncle, cousin and I headed off in search of a new adventure.  We had decided on going to the cardboard cup regatta, which is a cardboard boat race held at Crystal Lake.  Some of the boats were rather interesting and I enjoyed myself.  I’m not sure that I would go again, but now I can say that I’ve done it. :-)  Here is one of the pieces of artwork that we enjoyed upon reaching the lake:

Yes, that is a cardboard boat…notice the fly on the frog’s tongue.

Here’s me and my cousin:

Here’s some “action” shots of the races. 

We’re sinking!

This was my favorite:

This next boat was actually quite speedy, but the guys in it got to moving too fast and tipped themselves over twice…thus they lost the race.

The bus was kind of fun…

I much appreciated seeing the house topple…

On the way back to the vehicle, I couldn’t resist taking pictures of this truck:

This summer my brother Josh and I were invited to spend two weeks with relatives near Chicago.  We hitched our ride with my grandparents, who were headed up to Wisconsin for a couple weeks. 

Our adventure started last Friday.  We left my grandparents house at 6:00 am and started the all-day drive to northern Illinois.

Here is my grandparents’ “trusty” GPS, Gladys Penelope Sperry.

Some must-haves for a road trip…candy bottlecaps and an mp3 player.

We stopped at a nice visitor center on the Arkansas border and had our picture taken with the last sign of civilization.

And relaxed for a short time…

Grandpa and Grandma let Josh and me take turns driving with them.  My brother got to experience the excitement of driving through St. Louis.  He did great and he’s not even used to that kind of driving…  Here he is, handling five-lane traffic like a pro.

Five lanes…

St. Louis skyline and the arch:

We stopped for lunch.  I ordered chicken pot pie…it was fairly good.

Unfortunately I only have one picture from the rest of the trip through Illinios because I drove much of the way after entering the state. 

Once we were close to our destination, we were slightly confused as to what roads and such to follow.  So, we relied completely on the GPS (which made all of us a bit nervous; Gladys is rather temperamental.)  Despite that, we did arrive safely.

To be continued…

I actually took these pictures several months back…and just now got around to sorting them. 

These were taken at Devil’s Den State Park, on the Yellow Rock Trail.  There were lots of redbud trees on the edge of one of the overlooks; very pretty!

At least I think it’s a centipede…it might be a millipede…

Wow, check out that hairdo…

(As my brother would say.)

This second picture is a close-up version of the first…I didn’t even notice the colorful bird sitting on the fence til I looked at the picture on my computer later.

Weeds on the barbed wire…

More unnecessary text so that my pictures will work right…

Recently my family has been plagued by some mystery animal which has been eating the eggs in our chicken house.  So, we are currently without eggs.  Yesterday I suddenly had a strange feeling that the “mystery animal” was in the chicken house at that very moment, so I went out to see.  I poked my head in (slowly) and saw a large rat hanging out in the top nesting box.  My brother Josh, who was nearby, ran to get his .22 but the rat was gone before he came back.  Dad said we can just use rat poisoning….but that kinda takes the fun out of it.  Wish I’d taken my gun out there with me…   Then I would have a lovely picture to show ya’ll.  Let’s go rat hunting.