June 26, 2014 Jurgen is 15 days old today and we finally got everyone’s schedules synchronized in order to grab a group photo. Jurgen, Jeanette, Henriët, Howard, Andrew, Carla Jurgen, Henriët, Andrew Jurgen, Henriët, Andrew Carla and I have been married 38 years today; we can’t think of a better way to spend our anniversary.
June 22 & 26, 2014 Andrew and Henriët live in a beautiful area. Many of he houses are 60 or more years old and are nothing like the cookie cutter subdivisions we are used to in Portland. In between our times googling over Jurgen, Carla and I have gone out on some walks. Mushrooms cropping …
Henriët’s mother, Jeanette, is an artist; we have some of her work on our walls at home. She arrived in Chicago from Johannesburg a few weeks before Jurgen was due. Her first mission on arriving was to paint and decorate Jurgen’s room to remind him of his heritage. Henriët and Andrew are also taking a …
The Oumas (o-mahs – Afrikaans for grandmas) went to the farmers market this morning for some tasty surprises. Andrew and Henriët were hanging with Jurgen so I took a 20 minutes walk into Riverside to go trackside. I caught a couple of Metra commuter trains; one traveling east from Chicago to Aurora; the second heading …
Let’s take a break for a moment from the sites on our road trip, and the trains I’ve seen to focus on why we headed to Chicago in the first place – our little grandson Jurgen – born to Henriët and Andrew. As most of you know, Henriët is from South Africa; she was very close …
We slept in a bit in Grand Island, Nebraska – our fifth day away from home. Carla saw the Stuhr Living History Museum on the way into town from the freeway. Since they don’t open until 9:00 AM and our day’s journey would be relatively short, we had the opportunity to get a bit of …
After doing some grocery shopping with Carla in the morning I took the afternoon off to hunt trains. There are two sets of tracks not far from Andrew and Henriët’s house. I headed northeast to the Berwyn Public Library where the parking lot is right next to the Canadian National tracks. I sat in the …
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk KiddMy rating: 4 of 5 stars The first section of this book held me breathless; it is among the best writing I’ve encountered. The story is compelling and it is beautifully told. It is tough to write about without spoiler alerts. Young Lilly Owens grew up in …
Day 3: Rock Springs, WY to Grand Island, NE June 17 would be the longest travel day for this part of the trip. We covered 630 miles in 10 1/2 hours.We took our time stopping along the way to stretch our legs. A bit east of Rock Springs we came across the remnants of old …
The second leg of our road trip to Chicago would take us from Boise through the Utah pan handle to Wyoming. We had hoped to get well into Wyoming but there aren’t many towns and the ones there are didn’t have hotel rooms for travelers. We had hoped to get to Rawlins, about 1/2 across …