Galena Day I

On July 13th  this year I went on vacation to Galena, Illinois with my family and my sister-in-law's family. We stayed in a time share that my parents graciously shared with us.  We arrived on Sunday and returned home Thursday. Three adults and five children ranging in age from 8 to 14 drove from suburban Chicago to the
tri-state area of northwestern Illinois, southwestern Wisconsin and Northeastern Iowa.  This is our story.

Day One

Since Galena is just a few hours away from us, we were able to attend church on the day we left.  Our interim pastor was taking a few weeks of well deserved vacation.  At church I saw Ben Calhoun from the Christian band Citizen Way. His band has played at our church before, but that is not why he was there. His father was giving the sermon for our vacationing pastor.

After church, we had a quick lunch and drove to Sycamore, IL where my SIL lives.  We reorganized the vehicles by gender and drove to Galena.  Galena is the part of Illinois that is not flat and I enjoyed the scenery as my son and nephew chattered on about all things Mine-craft.  The trip took about 2 hours.  I may have considered throwing myself off one of the rolling hills with all the Mine-craft discussions, had we not had radio contact with the other car  provided by the walkie talkies we brought along for the ride.

We got to our hotel and scouted the place out.  My SIL and her kids were in one suite and we were in another.  Ours had 2 balconies,2 fire places , 3 TVs,  2 bedrooms, a main room, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, one with a hot tub, and a laundry room.  In other words, it was a dump.  For the rest of the day,we went swimming and talked on the walkie talkies, and after dinner all watched the movie Field of Dreams. Galena is an hour from the place where it was filmed, and planned to visit there later in the week.  The vacation got off to a terrific start!

Next Episode: Returning the favor.