Carnival of Carnivores

This was our 18-month anniversary day! We went out that night to Naperville Ribfest. We met up with our friends Rodney and Christina there.

It was still incredibly hot, but C and R had managed to score some prime real estate in the shade. Jason and I split a delicious rib sandwich and a huge plate of cheese fries. Yummers. We drove Rodney and Christina crazy using our "What's deep but not profound" riddle. We'll be surprised if they ever want to hang out with us again after that ... ;) Then we went to check out Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. We got up very close to the stage to the standing room only area. We were surrounded by people in leather, with tattoos and spikey hair. As we were listening, we all realized that we only knew one song by Joan Jett -- I Love Rock and Roll. Although a couple others rang some faint bells.

After they sang that song (wildly successful with the crowd), we ran off to see Foghat. We watched them for ages but those dorks never sang any of the songs we knew! Although we did thoroughly enjoy watching the lead singer sing into a fan with his long hair blowing around. Now I wonder -- why didn't his voice get distorted by that fan?

So we left -- and realized that we were going to need to wait like 2 hours for the line to get on a bus back to where we parked, so we walked back to our cars. Thanks to Rodney's super iPhone which provided us with directions.

We started out this day with an 18-month anniversary breakfast at the Egglectic Cafe in Wheaton. Then we headed to Batavia to save Jason's mom's cats from starving while she was visiting her sister out of town. The kitties were very happy to see us. Then we went for a bike ride around the Danada preserve in Wheaton. It was 85 degrees, no shade, we forgot water, and there are some good-sized hills. Desperately, we sought out a soda machine at the Danada equestrian center for some liquid refreshment, but it denied our dollar bills! We almost committed vending machineicide. We turned around pretty quickly, but we did do 6 miles total.

Fourth of July

Time again for fireworks! This year we went again to the Pleasantdale Park District's celebration. But first we had a delish barbeque dinner at Kelly's parents before walking over. It turned out to be a chilly evening, strangely enough. Cara's boyfriend Evan took lots of crazy cool photographs of the fireworks, but of course none of them hold a candle to the amazing ones I took with my extremely high-tech point and shoot.

The fireworks were 20 minutes and set to music. Kelly especially liked the ones set to "What a Wonderful World", and Jason especially liked the ones that went "Bam!" and set fire to the kid's hair in front of us. Just kidding about the kid's hair, he was fine.

Jason and Kelly both learned that day that hot air balloons are full of hot ordinary air, not any special gas.

Fables from a Jasonfly: What I Tell You In My Blog Is True

Tonight we saw Fair to Midland at The Fuel Room in Libertyville (part of Austin's Saloon & Eatery). It wasn't a packed show but the crowd was full of die-hard fans. We got there a couple hours early and shared a chicken pretzel sandwich; or was it a pretzel chicken sandwich? Which 'wich was it? Who cares it tasted good either way.

The first band on stage was 18 Speed Tranny. The drummer had a beard that reached all the way down to hell. These guys were heavy metal to the core! We enjoyed their performance, but after awhile the songs all started to sound the same. The next band was Munroe. Their set, musically, was a little more interesting than Tranny, but by now I was impatient to see Fair to Midland: I've really been into FTM's new album Fables from a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True.

Munroe had some issues. To begin with, they came out much later than expected, and the singer just couldn't seem to get his guitar tuned. The other guitarist was odd in that he sometimes "fondled" the bass player's strings. What the heck was that about?

Then. Fair to Midland. Within the first 30 seconds they had displayed more energy, more experience, than the other two bands combined (although Mr. Beard from Tranny tried his best to get the crowd going via hand gestures and flying/twirling drumsticks). I knew FTM had energy, but I wasn't expecting the lead singer to be so crazy, and he was obviously drunk. He was jumping, kneeling, falling, and pacing all across the stage. His voice went up, then down, then everywhere in-between, his facial expressions going from pensive to crazy as he bared his soul for the audience. And while the musical message seemed to be getting through fine, his attempts at speaking to the crowd were barely comprehensible. However, the band was magnetic and most of the songs were played pretty well. Truth be told, I loved every minute of it!

All the pictures, by the way, were taken by a photographer at the venue, including this one of me and Kelly.

Video from the show at YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFNVS9hc_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II89xtrplCo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoasu2IpdCU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIm32kQAs54

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G91b4Z95Btg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAlI9cTYB70

Just Another Saturday

... for love. We hit our favorite breakfast spot in town, the Geneva Diner, for a delish breakfast. It was a rainy morning, and we passed by all the drowned Swedish Days festivities on our walk to and from the diner. Then, since Swedish Days was kinda lame (we'd tried it the night before), we biked to St. Charles on the Fox River trail. In all we did a little over 7 miles round trip. We stopped in at Town House books to soak in the lovely independent bookstore atmosphere, then grabbed a couple of lemonades on the back patio. Then we biked to a nearby park to play mini golf. Jason told me he'd had his first kiss in the park. My first kiss was in a park, too. We played mini golf and Jason got TWO holes in one, the show-off! And he won by one point, which is funny because the first time we ever played mini golf we'd tied exactly. On the bike home, the river was so high that it had washed out part of the trail, so we had to go around. The mallads were loving it. They were thick as pigeons on the banks. We discovered that the trail on the west side of the river goes through the park where we first played mini golf, and where we once flew a kite. Jason and Kelly both had to wipe huckleberry jam off themselves as the ripe fruit was all over the trail, and our tires were smushing it and spitting it out on us. Kelly got sunburned on her arms, her first sunburn on the first day of summer!

Pizza Amore

Just because.

South Kettle Moraine Camping

This was our BIG GROUP camping trip of the year. Tony and Susie gave us a ride up in their big red truck, and Jamie (Jason's coworker) and Joel and Cara (Kelly's sister) and Evan met us up there.

Susie and Tony had visited South Kettle Moraine before, so they knew exactly which site was the coolest one. If you want to know which number it was so you can reserve it too, too bad! We are keeping the secret. It was in a campground loop that was super quiet because campers were not allowed, and it was also a walk-in site. The con -- dragging all of our car camping equipment up a hill. The pro -- total privacy. The awesomeness of the site alone was worth the whole trip.

Hiking options were only so-so, but we did hike the Scuppernong Trail and a nice part of the Ice Age Trail. Most of the trails were for die-hard mountain bikers, and not wanting bike tire marks on our foreheads, we avoided those.

We saw some neat birds, the most vocal was definitely the Oven Bird. They were singing their little hearts out ... "Teacher Teacher Teacher Teacher!" until I wondered if my sister was going to go crazy. Jason and I hunted one down so that I could see it, since it was much easier to hear them than to find them. We also chased a really big bird through the trees in the campground. We think it may have been an eagle. But we never got to see more than it's shadow navigating the treetops as it flew out of sight.

We had a great campfire on Saturday night with the whole gang. Jason showed how manly men make fire with flint. And we ate like kings -- giant cheeseball, cheese fondue, cheese curds (do you sense a Wisconsin theme?) and brats. We had so much food that we took half of it home. Evan pulled out his pipe and looked seriously Sherlock.

Also a big hit -- the hammock. There was someone snoozing in it practically at all times.

And, Jason made a lovely funeral pyre for the goldfish bag, may it rest in peace.

Hoodoo you Love?

We are back from our Southwest adventure and we had a great time! Jason saw the Grand Canyon for the first time, and I saw it for the first time with snow ... yes ... it snowed our last night at the South Rim, and we woke up to big wet globs of snow falling off the pines onto our tent. Luckily that was the day we were leaving for sunnier territory.

But while we were at the GC, we hiked along the rim trail and saw a great sunset. Yes, the Grand Canyon is overcrowded, but if you want a little peace just walk 1/2 a mile from any major overlook and the canyon only belongs to you. We also walked down the Bright Angel trail 1 1/2 miles. This is a trail that is shared between hikers and mules, so it's a bit stinky. But the views definitely make up for it, and it's neat to hike down through several layers in geologic time (we got all the way to the RED layer. aka Navajo sandstone.) This hike should only take 2-3 hours, but it took us more like 5 because it was warbler mania. I think Jason has officially addicted me to bird watching. I only pointed out a robin once (they are actually much less common out there, believe it our not). Thanks to our handy dandy guidebook, we also got to see Sinagua pictographs on the canyon walls that we figure that the National Park Service doesn't point out to people since jerks like to add their own graffitti to those things. They blend in a bit so you have to know where to look, but when you do they pop out. On the trail, Jason got to live his childhood dream, which was to see a California Condor, North America's largest bird (9 foot wingspan, and has been extremely endagered). Actually we probably saw more around 9-10 circling, and we got to watch them come in to roost at night.

Then we went to Bryce, where neither of us have ever been before, and fell in love with the "hoodoos", the weird red pillars that fill up the canyon and for which Bryce is known. We hiked along the rim there, which was sort of a dizzying experience. You're awfully close to the cliff edge, and every time you look over to check out the spectacular view, your brain does a cartwheel from adjusting to the perspective.

We also hiked down into the canyon to the Queen's Garden. It's a short hike but steep and with some harrowing parts where there's cliffs on either side, but no problemo! Check out the people in the photo of the hoodoos from the trail to get an idea of perspective. There were crazy people climbing on some of these things for photos. Rock slides still happen in this canyon, people!

Other highlights: we saw the rings of Saturn through a telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, checked out the world's best preserved meteor impact crater, and walked to the base of a giant cinder cone volcano at Sunset Crater Nat'l Monument. And we saw cliff dwellings at Walnut Canyon Nat'l Monument.

And last of all, we hit Zion and took some great hikes among the sandstone cliffs and saw tons of beautiful birds including the nectarine-colored Western Tanager and the Lazuli Bunting. I also really liked the Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warbler. Jason also has a picture of a Broad-Tailed Humingbird with a California Condor soaring behind it. It's probably hard to see either of them, but we will always remember the moment we got to see the largest bird at the same time as the smallest.

We camped in every park, only wimped out and got a hotel once (it was pretty cold in Bryce, which is at a high elevation), and had very good luck getting nice campsites.

Our favorite campsite was at Zion. First of all, it was warmest there, being at a lower elevation, so we slept a bit better. Also we were in a cottonwood grove, which the birds loved. We arrived around 11 AM and spent an our just sitting at our picnic table as new birds paraded themselves around for us. We had a little moat around us, too, which the humingbirds liked to drink from, and a yellow-bellied marmot worked on building a nest not ten feet from our tent. We even got to see a lady humingbird building a nest using cottonwood fluff! And it top it off, we were in the shadow of the red cliffs, one in particular we named the "Big Red Tooth" (I think when Jason suggested we name it he had something more romantic in mind like Love Mountain, but the name I came up with stuck a little better ;) )

We saw a lot of wildflowers. Especially at Zion. The reddish pink globe mallow, shooting stars, yellow prince's plume, white Datura, and yellow columbine, to name a few. Some cacti were blooming, too. And we saw lizards galore, mule deer, wild turkeys, elk (at Grand Canyon) and antelope (at Bryce). And scary squirrels with really big teeth that liked to attack you for peanuts. We have a video of one (below).

We flew into and out of Vegas. When we arrived we got out of there as fast as we could, but returning, we had a few hours to kill, so we walked around the strip a bit. It was quite the contrast to our peaceful nature vacation. The animated fountain in front of the Bellagio hotel was really cool, though. Some of the water must have rocketed up at least 70 feet in the air. Also we walked through the Mirage hotel, which has a Beatles theme at the moment because they are hosting a Cirque de Soleil show all with Beatles Music.

And on the way back, we missed our flight by one minute! It was a comedy of errors that included the fatal mistake of going to competely the wrong terminal at the airport.