A little overnight trip

On the spur of the moment we decided to do a little overnight trip.  On Monday morning we started our drive to Arthur, Illinois.  Ron says it is about a 130 miles.  We were going to take back roads like we usually do, but we had had snow, and he was concerned that some of them may not be real clean.  We started out by taking route 47 south, to Mahomet where we did pick up an expressway.  This cool barn quilt was not far from the interchange.

Once we got to the Arcola interchange, off we got and headed toward Arthur.  There are a lot of Amish that live in the area.  After we had lunch at Yoder's Kitchen, we went down one of the county roads.  The Amish use draft horses for their farm work.  These beautiful horses were sharing a field with the cows.

Laundry needs to be done.  It was interesting to see it hanging outside.  We are so used to having our dryers and modern conveniences.  

The whole time we were in the area, there was fog.  It gave a strange quality to the day.  This is the country road we went down to get to our next stop.

This place is so neat. They sell all sort of bulk merchandise.  Someone makes the best hard candy that is sold there.  We had to replenish our supply from the last time we were there.  I also got the ingredients to make a pretzel, nut, mix to serve for company.  They have it in small or large quantities.

You can purchase all sorts of great things, pic filling, all the ingredients to bake, or make soup.  There is all sorts of candy, nuts, jello, things needed for making pickles.  I think they are everything! It is so much fun to see what they have.  There is no electricity in the building, lighting is by kerosene lamps.

The whole day was so strange with the fog, The trees looked like they had frost covering them.

We headed north again as we were going to stay in Utica at the Starved Rock Lodge.
On our way we ran across this quilt on a silo.  I did make Ron turn around so I could get pictures.  This was a first.

Don't you just love this quilt.  It was worth the turn around.

Ron is in our room.  The original lodge is going to celebrate it's 75th anniversary.

When Ron made the reservations, he found out that there was going to be trolley ride to see Christmas lights in the surrounding towns.
We had a two hour ride.  The fact that we had all this snow made it so magical.  It is so pretty to see the lights shining through the snow.  After we got back we did run into town to get a bite to eat. Andy had told us about a great little bar in town to have burgers.
We had a super great day. I will update our Tuesday morning in my next post.
Have a great evening!
Mary