Mother's Day and We're Off Again

I enjoyed Mother's Day morning with Panchi, Sarah and Trey.  The girls fixed delicious breakfast tacos and a scrumptious blueberry coffee cake with lemon curd.  I'm sure it had enough fruit to be classified as health food!


Everyone needed to go their separate ways and Stanley and I left about noon to pack up.


Early Monday morning Frosty took us to the train station.  The Texas Eagle headed for Chicago.


First stop:  Champaign-Urbana IL for a visit with Stanley's sister Connie and her husband Fred.  After a lovely dinner, we had a tour of the University of IL campus including some of Stanley's old haunts, and then back to the house.  Stanley and Connie had a great time going through some of their father's things.


Some of the favorites were the arrowheads.

What a nice visit.  We are already looking forward to the next time.

For sure we will need to check out the future of this giant euphorbia in Connie's living room.

The next morning we took the train to Chicago and then rented a car to drive to Elizabeth.  We tromped through the timber, slugging through thigh high weeds along the way.  No mushrooms, no orchids.  Just weeds!  However, there were patches of phlox along with other signs of a lush warm spring.

Then to Lena to visit Ruby.  She was in high spirits and we enjoyed our brief visit with her.  After tea and cookies we drove on to Rockton where we luxuriated on Martha's back deck for almost two hours drinking in the sights, sounds, and smells of her garden along with some nice red wine.  


The next morning, we were off to Chicago to catch the Empire Builder to Spokane.


It was Illinois Tourism Day and the Great Hall of the Union Train Station was lined with tables representing many different communities and organizations.  

There was even a band.  They played a waltz and we couldn't resist.  Now I can say I have waltzed on the marble floor of the Union Station Great Hall.  I'm thinking it's a fairly small club.