Fun and Games Dept

I need to see some autumn colors today. Mother Nature didn’t really want me up in the air in one of my favorite airplanes today, so we went for a ride across the prairies of Northern Illinois.

I’m getting to know Northern Illinois like the back of my hand. I feel as comfortable driving across the backroads of the area as if I was driving the backroads of my native Upstate New York.

The beauty here is different but nonetheless quite beautiful.

We made a stop at Kankakee River State Park. The camping areas have been closed for 2020 but many folks were enjoying the picnic areas along the river. We spent some time strolling about the quiet Potawatomi Camping Area. During our walk we talked about retirement and touring the country in an RV.

I miss camping. I love nature.

As a solid Gen-Xer, I was raised on 1970s and 80s television. Monday night? Little House On The Prairie. Tuesday night? Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Wednesday: Eight Is Enough. Thursday: Mork and Mindy, The Waltons.

The list goes on.

Sprinkled in there was “The Mary Tyler Moore” show. The show was a little more adult than I preferred in my elementary years but I always found Mary Tyler Moore to have that classic beauty and she seemed really nice. I know the theme song and opening credits have always brought a smile to my face.

Remember when television shows brought a smile to our face? Television was an escape from the rigamarole of real life. We could step away from the ills of the day and lose ourselves in a idealized version of days gone by or laugh our way through 30 minutes of escapist comedy. Sure, plenty of shows had a realism to them, but the technology and production values of the day gave us the opportunity to fill in the blanks with our imagination.

Whenever I see the Peignot Font, preferably in rainbow colors, or hear the familiar first bass notes of the theme song, I instantly think of Mary Tyler Moore and her smile. And then I smile.

Love Is All Around, no need to waste it.

Our new town square opened at the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns. I’m happy we can still have socially distant gatherings in the neighborhood.

I took the day off from work. Yesterday I gave Earl a rough idea of what I had in mind for the day off, but I didn’t really know any specifics. I didn’t want to plan the day down to the smallest of detail. And I know that while I love going for drives on the prairie, I didn’t want to go out on the prairie on this day off.

My goal was simple: get away from the city, get off the grid, and get away from the news.

Earl packed us two picnics, one for lunch and one for dinner. We set out for a drive to the east. I decided we should explore a couple of state parks along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Within two hours of departure, we were at Warren Dunes State Park near Bridgman, Michigan. I had my feet in the chilly waters of Lake Michigan. There was no cell service.

It was awesome.

My familiarity with sand dunes along the Great Lakes is confined to those near where I grew up, specifically at Southwick State Park near Henderson, New York. The sand dunes at Warren Dunes dwarf those where I grew up by quite a bit.

While Earl enjoyed some time on the beach, I went hiking and climbed the biggest dune. I circled around the back and sort of spiraled my way up.

The sand was not as hard packed as what we have along Lake Ontario back at Southwicks, but that made it slightly easier to climb. I spent some time in the shade of the trees on the dunes. Since my childhood home was about seven miles inland from Lake Ontario, we had plenty of sand and the same kind of trees around the house, though the sand was under the farmed top soil. These trees felt quite familiar.

There were others on top of the dunes. Many climbed straight up the front.

It was wonderful to be closer to nature. We had a nice lunch in the wooded picnic area and then spent some time on the beach enjoying the sound of the waves.

We then decided to continue our journey northward and drove along the Lake Michigan shore, finally ending up at Van Buren State Park. This park was more wooded but with plenty of dunes. The main path to the beach was closed. There was a posted detour through the woods, which took us up and over a dune. We decided not to climb down to the lake, as we’d have to climb back up to get back home.

There was plenty of sand and trees along the path.

We decided to eat an early picnic dinner before making the drive home. Earl went all out with the picnics. A table cloth, placemats, and even an after dinner mint.

It’s important for all of us to step away from technology and remember how beautiful Mother Nature can be. I feel like I’ve hit a ‘reset’ button. The rest of the work week will be a snap.

This is my favorite time of the year. I’m taking tomorrow off from work so we can escape into nature, away from the rest of the world. Things just keep getting louder. It’s time to unplug and unwind.

I didn’t think I’d really use Apple’s new scribble feature in iPadOS 14. I’m a really fast typist and I find my words flow really well when I’m plunking away on a traditional QWERTY keyboard.

For those not familiar, the newscribble technology in iPadOS 14 users allows users to handwrite any input into any field in any application on your iPad. For example, in safari I can write duckduckgo.com and go to that webpage without typing anything. The technology isn’t perfect but it’s absolutely amazing. in fact, I’m writing this blog entry by hand and watching it type itself out in my wordpress app. There are still some quirks to get used to, but overall it recognizes my handwriting just fine, in both printed characters and when I use cursive.

I’m still getting used to my Apple Pencil, even though I’ve had it since I bought this iPad Pro in late 2018. When I make a mistake I am able to scribble out the typewritten result and rewrite it. That’s wicked cool.

It’s taking me longer to handwrite this blog entry instead of typing it, but for short passages when I’m doodling on my iPad, it’s a pretty nifty feature.

By the way, the Office 97 assistant up there was my favorite of Microsoft’s offerings back in the day.

Her name was scribble.

And so we are moving into my favorite season of the year. I love the crispness of the air in autumn, even if it’s chilly and a sign of another winter on the horizon.

Cycling is a favorite activity of mine for this season. The breezes usually keep the sweat manageable and the lower humidity makes breathing easier for me as I force this 52-year old body to achieve personal cycling goals.

Today I rode around the Loop area downtown. There are signs of tourists visiting the Windy City but it’s still relatively quiet down there. Several storefronts are still boarded up from the protests and riots. There’s a too large selection of businesses that appear to have shut down due to COVID-19 restrictions on attendance and the like.

I am certain Chicago will bounce back from the pandemic, along with the rest of the country, but I wish the recovery was moving at a pace equaling what other countries are doing right now. Perhaps better leadership on a national level is just what this country needed. I feel like the Trump administration failed that test and failed it completely.

We have too many extremes on both the left and right side of the political equation. I like to think many of us are just left of center or right of center, but the media and the Internet zealots want us to be in the fringe areas.

We need to resist this.

In the meanwhile, it’s a beautiful time of year to cycle in the Windy City. I highly recommend the activity.

It’s become popular to close off streets in the City of Chicago for responsible, weekend entertainment during this pandemic. I’m sure “Dine Out West Lakeview” has become a welcomed addition to the Southport Corridor. The restaurants appeared to be quite popular tonight.

With the weekend upon us we have nothing in our plans. My scheduled flight for the weekend has been cancelled due to inclement weather in the forecast. We’ll probably watch our weekly Star Trek movie on Sunday night. And on Saturday we’ll go for a ride somewhere.

I like going for rides in the car. I’ve always liked going for rides in the car. But we’ve gone on so many rides this year, mostly because there hasn’t been much else to do with the current COVID-19 situation, I know the northern half of Illinois like the back of my hand.

I’m hesitant to spend too much time in adjacent states, though we do dip into Indiana or Wisconsin once in a while. With such an uneven approach to pandemic precautions across the country, upon entering Chicago we’re reminded that we’re suppose to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival if we’ve been in a “COVID-19 Hot Spot”. Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa occasionally make that list and with Big Brother watching us the way it does in 2020, I don’t want our license plate reader showing up on an Indiana camera and then someone wondering why we didn’t quarantine when we got back home.

My husband and I are always extra cautious. We always wear masks, we wipe down everything with sanitary wipes, we have buckets of hand sanitizer in the car, and we don’t eat in restaurants. I’m sure there’s more than one french fry under the seats of our Jeep Cherokee.

I never thought I’d see the day where I’d be bored of going for a ride in the car, and I’m not really bored of the practice, but there’s only so many times one can drive across the prairie on Illinois 47.