Sunny Brook Farm

Between our RV park and the Iowa border, there is corn as far as the eye can see. Then we went down into the Missippi Valley and a lot of trees. The river is impressive here, but not as wide as at Memphis The elevation was 279 feet. That means the river only has to drop 279 feet between here and the Gulf of Mexico! No wonder it's so slow and wide!
Then we were in Illinois. It smelled damp. All along the Interstate, workers are doing work on the bridges. The road itself is in sad need of repair. Crops in the fields by the Interstate are almost entirely corn, with some alfalfa. There were three signs strung along the road like Burma Shave signs: "Lower our dependence - On foreign oil -Soy Biodiesel.com". We passed an ethanol plant, too. This is a chilly, cloudy day. On the radio, the weatherman predicted that it might freeze overnight.
We passed an exit for the hometown of Ronald Reagan. We also entered Grundy County (Miss Grundy for Madeline). Nancy looked in he Birding Hotspots book and saw that just a few miles away was a wildlife area where we could stop for lunch and walk on one of the trails to stretch our legs. We went into the visitors' center at Goose lake Prairie State natural Area and said we would like to know about birds in the area. The docent said, "Oh, you must have come to see the Henslow sparrow. It's rare and very hard to see. People come here from all over the world to add it to their Life List." We'd never heard of it, but we said, "Yes, sure!" so as not to dampen her enthusiasm. "People come from Hong Kong and Thailand and um, San Francisco to see the bird. The best luck seems to be at stop number 9 on the nature trail. Good luck!" So we looked the little guy up in the bird book and set out. We didn't see anything at number 9, but we heard pipping farther along. Apparently, this sparrow doesn't fly a lot. It likes to creep along the ground under the grasses and only occasionally goes up to the top of a weed. We saw movement in the swamp grasses and Rich spotted a bird climbing up and down a stem. Then Nancy saw one hopping along for a drink about two feet from the trail. So! Now we have a Henslow's sparrow on OUR lifelist. We're really not great at birding, but we enjoy it. As we walked back to the center, we admired the biodiversity of the prairie - grasses, wildflowers, several kinds of berries and seeds on plants all in one square foot, as well as a variety of swamp plants. Daisy nosed something on the grass and a HUGE six inch Chinese praying mantis flew into her face, startling all of us! We had lunch by the tall grass.
The houses along here have HUGE lawns. It looks like they just decide how big a lawn they want, mow the weeds, and there's the nice, green lawn!
In Joliet we passed an enormous ExxonMobile refinery. Its parking lot was filled with cars. Next to it was gas station and diesel was $4.04, the same price it was a hundred miles away. A railroad yard was nearby with hundreds of shipping containers and they were being loaded onto trucks. Next to the Des Plaines River, there was a high concrete wall a few feet thick. On the other side were houses in Joliet at least 20 feet below the rim of the wall and the water level! What was that about?
Rich wants to mention animals. There are dairy cows. Oh, he meant roadkill (don't look, Cindy Wilde) raccoons and possums. PLants? Lots of pampas grass along the road. We also have seen burdock with large burrs (Rich says I can't use the word huge any more today). We can't look at burrs without thinking of them and how they inspired the guy who invented Velcro. Nancy spotted several trees with Osage oranges, she thought. Otherwise, they were (huge) unusually big yellow delicious apples. We avoided rush hour ourside of Chicago, but had construction slowdowns instead. We waved at Chicago (we could see the buildings and the Sears Tower) for Nancy's sister, Carol, who was born there! We drifted into Indiana and you won't believe this - they grow
,TAA DAA, corn and soybeans! Nancy looked at the map and saw that Interstate 80 drifts closely to Michigan. Even though we hadn't planned on going into Michigan, we thought we could make a short dive north. Michigan looks like the north country with shorter trees, like Minnesota. The grass is green and the trees are only barely starting to turn. for example, only half of a maple tree or one branch might have turned red. We actually saw grapes, pumpkins and horses, not the usual corn, soy beans and roadkill! We were getting ready to think about a place to spend the night so Nancy was scanning the map. She noticed that it was only 40 miles out of the way to where she had a summer job as a waitress at a resort the first summer after college to earn money for the World Campus Afloat. She looked in the Woodall's camping directory and found an RV park called Sunny Brook RV Resort in the same town. She had worked at Sunny Brook Farm Resort. It had to be the same place, so we headed there to spend the night. Lo and behold, it was a brand new, beautiful park. It was on the same land, but just last year, they had torn down all the cabins and the buildings to build an RV park instead. How about that! The caretaker (about 30 ) was awed that Nancy had worked at the place before he was even born! Do I feel old now??? There were about seven people in the park. We went into South Haven for dinner. We slept to the tune of the fountain in the lake and memories in our heads.

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