Visit from Unckie Eye

The last couple weeks of June Unckie Eye came to visit us from Germany. We did all sorts of fun stuff with him! First we stayed close to home and did things like shopping and Home Run Inn. Then we had some adventures like going to the Illinois Railway Museum, which was a lot of fun. They had all sorts of trains from different eras, even some you could ride! I enjoyed the streetcar immensely. There were all these different buildings with different types of train engines in them - steam ones, street cars, etc. Lots of information about each one too, which was fun. Some of them were open for us to go inside as well. The other neat thing about the place is that they have all these volunteers who work to restore the place and the trains, so they're adding and renovating all the time. It was a busy and fun day! The next day we went to the Indiana Dunes, where we started off the day with a bike ride. Unfortunately, the trail was very poorly maintained. There were huge pits of water along a lot of the path, and areas of it were quite overgrown. Plus the whole thing was under power lines and along the railroad tracks, which wasn't exactly scenic. I did think it was fun to see so many cattails, because it reminds me of growing up in Alabama. We also saw a deer in the path on our way back, so that was neat. We ended up riding 12 miles, and it is always fun to bike anyway! After that we went to the beach, where we had a picnic lunch and enjoyed hiking up the dunes. It didn't take long, but it was fun all the same. The water was too cold to actually go in, but the day was still fun overall!

Stephen, Bubby, and Bobby also had some adventures without us, like going to Six Flags and Starved Rock. We visited Chick Fil A too, which was very exciting for me. The last day of Unckie's visit was the 4th of July, where we had a nice cookout and just enjoyed each other's company one last time. It was very sad to say goodbye, but we did have some great times with him these past couple weeks!