weekend away

OK, so I haven't been glued to the keyboard lately!  Although Bob has been dropping hints (not so subtly) that I am overinvolved with my computer, like this morning when he inquired if I had found a way to attach the laptop to my body yet.  I don't think he was joking!  So I will share some great pictures that I took on our little 3 day tour last weekend.  We drove eastward, stopping in the Dells to see if the lake had filled up again (yes, even though it appears low there were still tourboats operating) and then to Madison.  Not usually thought of as a vacation mecca, but a hotel room was available and it is an easy drive and Taste of Madison was happening.  So we wandered, had good food, good beer, listened to music that was not outstanding, and got sunburned.  We spent awhile Saturday strolling the Botanical Gardens, which were lovely, and a good source of pictures as you see:

And we found a cool spider tunnel web:

The second closeup picture shows the spidey in its lair!

Sunday we drove to Geneva, Illinois, to explore what I had read was a quaint little old town, which is true, and they were holding a Folk Musical Festival on an island in the river so we wandered there and found some entertainment amongst the antique hippies.

The railroad bridge was a busy place, several trains crossing and sometimes going both directions.  There is this sort of oddball windmill in a park there and Bob felt his Dutchboy ancestry calling or something.  It was perfect summer days for us.  We continued on to Galena for a stopover but decided not to spend the night.  It reminded me of Stillwater on steroids, if you don't live around here that doesn't make sense, but it didn't hold a lot of allure for me.  It was a bit of a long drive home after that.  But I thoroughly enjoyed all the fields and little towns that we went through, that is to me just as scenic as the mountains or the ocean.  Actually, I can't really think of anyplace I have travelled to that I haven't found to be interesting and beautiful in its own way, yes, even the Badlands, even Nebraska!

So now home again, finished a quilt on Labor Day and have the next one ready to go on.  Yesterday I had the Ladies Sewing Society group at the store:

We are nearing completion of our block-of-the-month club, I will have pictures of some of the projects next month as they get blocks together.  They are a good group!