Wildlife Prairie Park

So, I realize that we have not blogged in quite some time. I feel that I need to provide some sort of explanation. First, the fall semester started for Immanuel and with that we have just had less time to go hiking and biking. Second, it's much colder now and the weekends haven't had nice weather lately. Third, we've had a couple things to blog about, but I am quite stubborn. You see, we were suppose to be taking turns on this blog and the next post would be Immanuel's turn. I have been trying to get him to write the post for weeks with no success. Honestly, I probably would have just written it myself (like I'm doing now) forever ago except that it took me a few days to write the "Moonshine Run" post and during that time Immanuel gave me a REALLY hard time about it. At one point he even said, "Fine. Don't write it. Whatever, why don't we just delete the whole blog then?" He will try to tell you this is not true. Anybody who knows him in real life, however, will believe me.

So, I apologize for the delay in posts. This post is about a trip we took back in September for my birthday. We went to a place called Wildlife Prairie Park in Peoria, IL. As a kid I went here with my family and have good memories of the place mostly because it was one of the very few family vacations that I can recall taking where we did not all argue the entire time. I do have one unhappy memory, however, and that is of not being able to go down the gigantic slide because it was raining. Immanuel joked that he would let me go down the slide if I wanted to.

The park consists of trails with animal exhibits spread throughout. The animals are native to Illinois (wolves, black bears, foxes, badgers, etc) and the exhibits are large and very natural. We were glad to have a zoom lens on our camera as this was the only way we were able to see the gray wolves. They were hiding at the very back of the exhibit and even with our high powered zoom lens we were only able to make out wolf like shapes.



There was a petting zoo with goats, horses, and sheep. The sheep was ridiculously soft, way softer than I ever expected. I guess I had never touched a sheep before. The horse was being stubborn and wouldn't come close enough to let me pet him. There was a miniature horse, however, that saw my hand reaching out and decided to walk just close enough and fast enough by me that my fingers were able to barely touch his hair. Stubborn horses.

Here's my friend, the sheep:

This is me, wondering why the horses don't love me.

Something was funny, apparently.

They are very determined to get some leaves.



There was a really nifty looking owl that I spent a lot of time trying to get a good picture of, mostly for my sister-in-law, Aimee, who loves owls.




I really enjoyed the badgers. One of them spent most of the time digging and the other kept pacing back and forth looking for a way out, I assume. Sometimes they would switch duties. There was always at least one pacing, looking along the fence, just in case, by some miracle a hole appeared where one hadn't been for ten years (or however long that exhibit has been there).

At the cougar exhibit we had to endure several minutes of very noisy "meowing". We could have easily tolerated this had it been from the cougar because that would have been somewhat amusing. We could have even tolerated it from a child as that would be kind of cute... maybe. However, the meowing came from a grown man, he must have been at least in his 40s and it was very loud and very obnoxious.

We saw these really neat birds called Sandhill Cranes. The information plate said that they were called "preacher birds" by early settlers because they would tilt their heads up and scream while dancing like a preacher in front of his congregation. These birds also mate for life.

Once we were done seeing all the exhibits I remember thinking, "Man this was much bigger when I was a kid!" All in all though the place was great and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Before we headed to the car I said I wanted to check out the big slide, just to see if it was really as big as I remember, and wouldn't you know it? On the way to the car... it started to rain.

Kennekuk Cove County Park

This weekend Ginnie's shoulder was hurting, so we decided to do a near by hiking trail instead of biking. This meant we got to take Tesla, and he got to wear his new boots.

He had them on for all of five minutes, alternating between trying desparately to get them off and trying to live with them, before he managed to get one off. At this point Ginnie decided to oblige him and remove the others. We are not sure if this was a good idea, though, because when we got home he was limping on one of his paws. We tried to clean it and got a few little bits that may have been irritating it off. He was pretty tuckered out so we didn't see him move the rest of the night, so weren't sure if that was what was bothering him. He's always appeared to favor his left paw a little; when we first got him the vet was unable to find anything wrong, so it may just be some ancient injury acting up. As of today he doesn't appear to be having any trouble.

Having not learned her lesson from our trip to Amish country, she chose a trail from our book that was 7.5 miles and had four footprints on a scale of one to five. This was due to the large number of steep dips carved out by the creeks feeding Lake Mingo. It is very difficult to take a picture of steepness, but here is Ginnie's best effort.

The brightness at the top of the hill is from the midday sun being obscured by the ground and trees. The hills were not kind to Ginnie, and before we had gone two miles she was convinced she could not finish. Unfortunately for her I am a sadist and we continued. We got some cool pictures, but unfortunately no snakes.

Most of the pictures are pretty self explanatory, but there's one that we aren't sure about. We think it's some sort of dung with the nuts and berries in it, but we're not one hundred percent positive on that. At one point Ginnie was having an awful time with the camera and could not get a clear picture. No matter what she did, it was ending up fuzzy and light. We figured out the cause when we were putting the camera in the case before a steep climb: a big white bug on the lens. Luckily just blowing on it a little made it fly off; I did not want to accidentally get dead bug juice on the lens trying to get the sucker to go away.

I forgot to charge up the batteries for DSLR, but we can shoot like 2000 pictures on one charge, so I figured it would be okay. Just before mile marker 2 it was done and we had to put it away. Luckily we also had our point and shoot. It was of no help because I didn't charge it either, and I only managed to get one fuzzy picture of a caterpillar before it died. The camera died, not the caterpillar. The only caterpillar that died during our trip was the one Tesla ate. He apparently was not a fan, because he didn't eat any more after that, even though there were hundreds of them.

Like I said, Ginnie was convinced she would never be able to finish and she would die in the woods or something, and I just dragged her on. About half way around there is a picnic table next to the water. Tesla was able to drink and Ginnie got to sit for a while (for the first three miles there was no place to sit), which must have been just what she needed because after we got going again she was feeling much better and only mentioned dying one more time. Tesla and I went exploring one off-shoot of the trail to see if it was worth taking and decided against it because it appeared to be a dead end. Ginnie was convinced I had seen a snake. The following conversation ensued:

Ginnie: Did you see an anaconda?

Me: No.

Ginnie: Do anacondas eat people?

Me: No.

Ginnie: What do they eat?

Me: Small animals.

Ginnie: Like bears?

I decided she was just saying this stuff to give me something funny to write here, but she swears that's not the case. We also decided that snakes know that bearded men are poisonous for them to eat and that the toxicity is directly proportional to beard length. This is obviously why we have seen no snakes; they fear me. So either I have convinced her to stop making me cut my beard, or she was delirious from the heat and trying not to think about how she was going to die in the woods.

The post-anaconda part of the trail was uneventful except for the blue heron skimming across the water and the deer that we didn't get pictures of. Tesla was very intent on being the leader, but he could barely manage it. He would trot ahead of us and then slow down until we caught up and then he would speed up again briefly and repeat. This went on for at least 45 minutes, though occasionally he would drift off to the side of the path and appear to look for a place to lay down. We were worried he would have to be carried back to the car, but he made it. The whole thing took a total of 4.5 hours for a whopping average speed of just over 1.5 mph.

Robert Allerton Park

On the day we completed our first biking trail we also completed our first hike. We will definitely go back to this park as there are several trails we did not get to take. The park is beautiful and very peaceful. The only problem with the park is that there were too many people getting hitched on the day we went and we kept getting in people's way when they were taking pictures. Once we left the paved part of the trail and actually entered the forest this problem was over.

Our hike was fairly short, only about 2.5 miles. It was mostly through the forest, so very shaded and secluded. We were glad that we remembered to apply Off! and I must say that it worked rather well considering we were in a swarm of mosquitoes the entire hike and I only got bit once and it was on my forehead where I had forgotten to put Off!.

Again, I was scared that we would run into a snake. There was one point where Immanuel said, "Look!" and I completely freaked out and took off running thinking that he was pointing out a snake (he was really pointing out a butterfly). I am not sure at all where my fantastic reasoning skills went considering that if he had seen a snake there is absolutely no way he would actually point it out to me for fear that I may never leave the city limits again. He then decided that he should describe what it would be like if he actually did NEED to point out a snake. He said if I was not in danger of coming close and disturbing it he would never point it out. If, however, there was one nearby he said he would firmly say "Stop. Don't move." I then explained that I am not a good listener and now that I know this would be code for snake I would probably run, which, of course, is a poor idea seeing as how THAT would get me bit for sure. Hopefully we will just never see a snake.

Also, since we were in an actual forest this time I had a new fear: bears. I actually asked Immanuel if there was a possibility we might run into bears. Five minutes later he stopped laughing. Fifteen minutes later he yelled, "Lion!" I actually asked, "Where?" and looked around. He, of course, laughed, but I made a quick recovery by explaining I thought it might be a statue of a lion. There were, after all, statues and sculptures throughout this park, so it was a legitimate thought.

Overall the trip was peaceful and nice and I do hope to go back again soon. We didn't see any bears or any snakes. We did, however, see tons of mosquitoes, tiny frogs, and butterflies. The tiny frogs and butterflies were cute, but the mosquitoes I could do without. Thank God for Off!

This is a statue called "The Last Centaur." It was in the middle of the forest, right before a fork in the trail.


















I thought there was beautiful scenery throughout our hike and this picture proves it.











You can barely see it, but there in the middle of the picture is one of those tiny frogs I was talking about.