McHenry, IL

We just finished a 3-day stay with my old friend H and his friend Hippie who own a farm in McHenry, about an hour northwest of Chicago. We arrived last Thursday evening but H didn't return from work in NYC until Friday evening. Hippie was a very generous host in the meantime (and throughout the duration of our stay). We left this morning, having had the benefit of 3 full days to cook our meals, entertain the kids easily, spend time with H and H, and catch up on stuff that needed to get done, like getting the oil changed. It was a wonderful and rejuvenating stay, and I hope it's not another 7 years until I see H again, as I last saw him at our wedding!

I know H from our time together at an old employer -Thought Works - and Hippie worked there too, but I'd never known him. This was a nice opportunity to get to know him. One thing is for sure: he is excellent with 4 year olds. He led Alice through all the chicken tasks, accepted her help picking greens from the garden, and jumped endlessly in the trampoline with her. Molitor and he could nerd out about computers. And he appreciatively ate whatever I cooked, so... instant ingratiation.

H and Hippie seemed quite willing to do their own thing (seemingly an endless list of farm maintenance... Remind me to never own a farm) during our visit, which was lovely because then we didn't have to worry as much about interrupting their lives. The weather was amazing. I had expected nasty hot summer weather and instead got weather that required blankets at night (except for H, who requires AC when it reaches 75).

And now we are in LaCrosse, WI, in a Howard Johnson's, praying that Beatrice will finally go to sleep so we can too. At the farm, we all slept in the same room (in fact, it was Hippie's room... he slept downstairs on an air mattress... because evidently he's incredibly nice) and it worked fine. It turns out all we need is a separate room to decamp to while Beatrice falls asleep... which is of course what we don't have in a motel. Gonna have to splurge on a Best Western suite again...

On our drive, we toured briefly through Univ of Wisconsin at Madison because both of my parents went there for graduate school and Molitor's father taught there (at the same time my father was there, I think). It was a very pretty area. And you could see enclosed walkways connecting buildings because evidently it's Really F'ing Cold there in winter.

We are now pressing westward pretty aggressively (a relative term when you can spend at most 5 hours driving with the two girls each day) with the goal of getting to Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Badlands, etc. And hope to arrive in Vancouver by the end of the first week of September.