Skip to main content

Scenes From A Roadtrip









While up in Northlandia I thought it must have been a very good summer for mushrooms.  I saw them everywhere and not just ordinary ones, huge ones.  There was a lot of talk of fairy circles.  Now a clump of mushrooms is not a fairy circle.  A fairy circle, fairy ring or elf ring is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms.  None of the above fit the description.  However, the next couple photographs are.
  



It is quite a badge of honor to have circular or arcing fungi in your yard.  Folklore says that these areas can be either places of danger or good fortune.  Damn little pixies can't make up their minds, I guess.




More road side advertising.  The spelling is off, the structure is atrocious but the meaning comes through loud and clear.







An nice ornate tombstone found somewhere on the road trip.












Yes, indeed.




Straight west of Alpha a few miles and south of New Windsor in the boondocks is this small roadside stone.  It marks the place where a town existed.  It was a stage route, and contained a couple general stores, bank brickyard, 3 churches, 3 saloons and a post office.  It had around 850 people in 1839.  Sadly, the railroad went to Alpha and people moved there, thus the end of Oxford, Illinois.

++++++++++

As my old professor said in college and I repeat here often: never miss an opportunity to travel.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Flashback Friday

Class, Or Lack Thereof The Dwight Vice gravestone in Oquawka, Illinois. I bring this old chestnut out every so often just to remind me that class is classless.  Dwight Vice was killed in his home near Oquawka in 2001.  It was one of those things that can generate crime:  two guys thought Dwight had a lot of money stashed at home because of his pot-selling sideline to supplement his fishing job.   Not really one of those big drug deals gone-bad things.  Marijuana was, according to the trial, about the only stuff Dwight sold.   But these two guys barge into the house and killed Dwight and attempted to kill his 11 year old kid, Darryl, before they took off with what money they could find.   His son, now 23, was stabbed in the back and left for dead.  He survived and is wheelchair bound and has undergone several surgeries to repair his wounds.  He will be paralyzed for life.   None of this is pleasant.  Reading the f...

The Mary Davis Home - Part 2

None of these pictures were taken by me,  they came right from the MDH website.  I am posting these so that friends who have never seen inside where I worked can gain access.  After 27 years I have many stories, tales and acquaintances.  But, I wouldn't know how to express them appropriately in a few paragraphs.  I enjoyed 98% of my stay there and hope I made a difference in the lives of a fraction of the kids who entered.  The original MDH at this site was just the front part.  The large red-roofed area in back was added on in the 90's. This is the Jerry Carlton library.  It was unofficially named after one of the counselors who truly loved the place.   He passed away around 2002, I think.  Mr. Farber looks like he is explaining a few things to a client. The classroom. Activity area with the gym behind the windows. Another shot of the classroom. It was a little different area to teach since we had 2 classes and 2 teachers i...

Cameleopardids

Astronomy buzz is a lot like the National Enquirer - sensational, trashy, and often times just plain wrong.  How many times have we heard about the "Comet of the Century"?  A while back we learned of a possible new meteor shower that was going to be more like a "meteor storm"!  They were a new set of meteors that were formed in 1988 when a comet dissolved and left a shower behind.  Earth went through this area on Saturday May 24th  and many reports had it hyped to the extreme.   They were called the Cameleopardis after the constellation named after an early Roman name for a giraffe.  So there I was on early morning watch (3:18 - 5:00) at the tennis courts at Shawshank.  Lawn chair, tripod, camera and extra battery, I stood vigil looking up at the sky, waiting for a storm of meteors.  And looking.   And looking.  Snapping pictures for 30 second durations hoping to glimpse a meteorological event of the century?, decade...