Lots of Geocaching and a Trip Down Memory Lane

 July 14, 2024

    The goal of the next segment of our trip was to find caches in the rest of the counties in Indiana and Illinois.  Mission completed!  As we drove around the north side of Indianapolis, radar showed the end of Hurricane Beryl passing to the north.  It was quite breezy and we experienced some rain bands, but nothing like our family and friends in Houston.  Luckily, our house fared well (broken limbs and sections of wooden fencing down) and our kids' houses were okay.  Several days without electricity and AC is not fun, but we are thankful that it was not a stronger storm.  

We made a quick stop in the Illinois town where Kris spent her formative years and had lunch with a friend she went to school with from grades 1 through 9.  

Lawn Rangers have performed in a Presidential Inaugural Parade

Arcola High School still looks grand

The old brick streets are still there.

friends since first grade

Other fun things we saw in Indiana and Illinois:

Kokomo, Indiana

Awesome summer reading theme at the Kokomo Public Library

A stop in the "Land of Lincoln"

Macomb, Illinois is the birthplace of Elizabeth Magie, creator of the Monopoly game and has fun locations around the courthouse square:

Dice actually rotate on the spindle

Next, we saw how high the water in the Mississippi was when we crossed into Iowa. Quite a contrast to a few years ago when it was really low and exposed sandbars impeded the movement of goods on the river.

Many of the rivers in Illinois and Iowa were high from recent rains.  

Geocaching milestones along the way . . .

(zoothornrollo is our geocaching handle)