This last weekend we had a winter adventure.

My daughter made all state choral musician.  It's a pretty darn cool gig. The Illinois Music Educator Association hosts a convention to honor these talented kids. Nine state districts participate, a rigorous audition process occurs, 5000 kids audition and about a 1/10 make state. Orchestra, Choral and Band talent is represented and it all culminates in this big concert. I always go to everything she participates in, wouldn't miss it for anything. Thus a little road trip to lovely Peoria was in order. She left on a bus Wednesday night. Part of the hoopla is kids sharing rooms at the Holiday Inn - being independent and all. Reminds me of camp antics. We could probably call this IMEA antics! For some kids it's a first time away from home.

The drive for me was a good 2 1/2 hours, I left Saturday with road trip snacks, tunes to crank (really loud) and a bit of glee to just leave things behind for a bit of reprieve.

My son was on dog duty. Bless him for agreeing to help. ( I made him a pot of spaghetti sauce, had a pizza in the freezer and bought him his favorite cereal - what else does a kid need. He brought his laundry to do. It was a win/win for all

When you take a winter road trip you are surrounded by this bleak,dreary,surreal, dull, not quite whiteness- the sky and the road sortof blend into this unified blur. It's not particularly enchanting. I didn't really care - I had music and I had chocolate.  I did find a darling round barn on the way and I wasn't walking the dog or working on my taxes. At one point the sun came out, and I needed my sunglasses, the glare of the mass blanket of snow was so unbelievably bright. That was only momentary and the blended bleakness returned. 

Our plan after the concert was to head over to Knoxville to this really cool bed and breakfast I found, to see a film perhaps and then the following morning we planned to do some drive by college investigating.

I had found this little place to stay Walnut Grove Farms in Knoxville - near historic Galesburg. I had completely befriended the owner Janis on the phone - we talked for an hour and a half when I made my reservation! She and I had so much in common I could hardly believe it.

Getting to the farm was a bit of an adventure.  Janis gave astounding directions it's just that it was dark and country roads are  ...well country like.  Landmarks like turn right at the population sign actually mean the sign that says population 3200 - Welcome to Knoxville.  This means turn right at that sign.  We missed that detail at first. Since the town was very tiny and we found the sign you are now leaving Knoxville - umm it was pretty clear we had to pay more attention

Their property had this picturesque plowed curved hill of a drive and we came upon this astounding Victorian home - of course Janis and Rich were just as friendly as folks could be. Our home for the evening wasn't just a room. It was an entire guest house - 2 bedrooms - full living room and kitchen.  Unbelievable. She had some cheese and fresh home baked bread waiting for us. They helped us with directions ( for more country adventure) so we could take a bit of a trek to the theater to see 27 Dresses (which was a darling movie!)

Going home from the movie theater I did make an error on the highway and we totally went the wrong way.  Kate at this point had crashed from the entirety of the week and fell asleep. Major fog was rolling in - yikes I had trouble seeing the exits. It made it all rather interesting. One thing I can count on with my Kate is that we will somehow find the humor in situations like this. We both were crabby, tired and wanted to take hot baths in the claw tub that was waiting for us. We just wanted to get back. My wrong turn took us an hour out of our way.

Thankfully Janis did not have additional guests coming so she waived the check out time and told us to just relax.  Can you imagine the decadence of it all?  We each had hot steaming baths with Lavender Bath Salts that was extremely fragrant and soothing. I slept like a rock. We woke up at 10 am - to cows moo-ing of all things!


moo flickr image credit

The brilliance of this particular bed and breakfast owner is she left in the fridge a fresh pre-made country egg casserole, a decanter of pulpy orange juice, a fully stocked tea and coffee cabinet, 2 kinds of fresh muffins and enough fruit to make a really lovely fruit salad. It was a bit do it yourself,  but in a very very easy wonderful and homey way, the casserole was a bread lined pan, with egg, veggies, country ham and cheese -  absolutely amazing, a version of fanny farmers feather bed eggs if you've ever heard of that recipe - just pop in the oven and 30 minutes later a hot hearty meal. Best Sunday special breakfast ever!

What we didn't see the night before was this amazing barn  - rich of course with history and built in 1865 - yes that's right 143 years ago! The barn is now used for events, like weddings, wine tours and autumn and Christmas celebrations - the farm is also a 21st century working farm. Tons of fascinating historical information at their website 
 


Bank Barn at Walnut Grove Farm

The problem with meeting nice people like Janis and Rich is you could nestle into conversation and never leave. They were so very interesting and seemed to like us too.  

Unfortunately we had a day of colleges to drive by and so off we went.

We drove by

Knox College
Bradley University
Illinois State University
and Illinois Wesleyan University

We had conversations like - what's the difference between a college and a university ( try looking that one up on the internet ), what do you want to be when you grow up, are we there yet? Oh this doesn't look very pretty, i have to pee, when are we eating? Do you have anymore chocolate? She did make some strides in distinct areas she'd care to study - all good stuff to talk about.  

My intent as a parent was the beginnings of exposure for her. Each campus had a very interesting and unique presentation and was surrounded by an even more captivating or not so captivating community.  Country vs city vs state vs small vs liberal vs private.... definitely left her with a few things to think about.

Visually we were both taken with Wesleyan, ISU completely grossed both of us out - ewwwww state school, and both of us could see her at Bradley if anything because of the mix of country and city - Knox wasn't impressive at all yet it's offers a very independent curriculum - needless to say many more things to think about!

The REAL winter adventure began when the snow storm hit

I  think it was probably better that we didn't know we were headed into severe winter weather or that we didn't know how bad it really was - we remained ignorant - at one point it rained, hailed, thundered and lightening-ed, later in the pitch of the night the lightening filled the entire sky - it was totally bizarre.

We ended up on this heavily wooded road trying to find a town that should have been off the highway and wasn't - it was a road I knew of at least by name,  but we got so turned around so we ended up traveling a solid hour south vs north - the snow was so bad that all you could see was this black vortex of swirly speeding snow in front of you - we were literally crawling along but the snow around you was moving very fast again seemingly we were getting nowhere -- at one point we agreed outloud we were starved and that Kate had to pee fiercely --- of course in the middle of the woods it wasn't like the convenience of a burger or a bathroom was near - so the actual reality of all that had us squealing with laughter instead - at one point i just had to stop we were laughing so hard - good thing there wasn't another car around.  When you think about it we were pretty darn isolated - how eerie the whole thing was - what were we thinking ?? We did eventually find a great dive of a place to relax, eat and pee - and the storm settled down enough for us to at least see - beyond the hood of our car-  we were so out of our way.
 
We did eventually get back home to piles of snow, chores, the dog and brother


this flickr image sure found the beauty of a winter storm

<sup>Karen Hanrahan ~ Wellness Educator/Nutritional Consultant/Blog Author
708.482.0678 ~ Websites: Nutrition, Weight Loss, and Green Clean as seen on Oprah

Member of BNI - West Suburban BNI: "Chapter Mentor"
Member, Board Member and Programming Chair of West Suburban Women Entrepreneurs</sup>