Encounters

Whimsy On The Road

Posted by Eric

Mug Tree

One of my hobbies is geocaching. It takes me to places I wouldn’t otherwise ever go, and lets me see some unusual things. This past weekend my wife somehow convinced me to get up at 8 am and head out on a day-long caching trip. I wasn’t opposed to the caching, or the day-long part, but the 8 am, on a Saturday of all things, was tough. I’m glad she convinced me, though, as it proved to be an excellent day.

We first drove to Urbana, Illinois, to pick up her brother who is also an avid geocacher. He and I are both working on some geocaching challenges, one involving finding a cache in every county in the state, and another to find a cache on each page of the Illinois DeLorme atlas. While he’s got the advantage of being more centrally located in the state, the real reason he’s kicking my butt on these challenges is that the dude can optimize a route like nobody’s business. Where I might ride around all day and find a few caches in a handful of counties, with him in the navigator’s seat we traveled 250 miles, picking up eighteen new caches in ten different counties and covering six atlas pages. My best. day. caching. ever.

Along the way we saw a lot of cornfields (this is Illinois, after all), some really nice and unexpected forest areas and a big honking lake. But the one thing that really stood out was the tree pictured above. We came for a geocache called Mug Tree, not knowing that there was a real-by-god-literal-mug-tree awaiting us in the middle of nowhere. The cache description calls it a “spontaneous gesture of amusing goodwill designed to bring a smile to the faces of passing strangers”, which pretty much seems to sum it up. Nice to see whimsy is alive and well in the countryside.

Strange Things In The Woods

Posted by Eric

Tree Ring

I was hiking and geocaching in the wooded area behind Joliet Junior College today when I stumbled across this strange arrangement of sticks and grass encircling a tree in a clearing. No idea what the purpose is, but it’s clearly for something.

You know those fantasy stories where the intrepid adventurers are traveling through some ancient forest, and the trees seem to be trying to steer them towards or away from something? Well, these woods may not be ancient, but they do like to confuse anyone hiking through them. It’s almost impossible to blaze a straight trail through the place. I’m sure I could not find this spot again without my GPS.

Redneck Trailer

Posted by Eric

Bitch Trailer

This past weekend we drove down to Wilmington, Illinois to take a look at the Kankakee River, which has been threatening to flood there because of a buildup of ice dams. I like all things relating to heavy weather, so this was kind of a must-see for me.

It’s remarkably hard to get directly on the bank in much of the town, but right out in the middle of the river is an island, with parks on both the north and south ends. Both of the parks were completely flooded, which was kind of impressive to see, but you still couldn’t get a good view of the ice dams from the park access roads. Also on this island is a disreputable little trailer park, which at first glance looks like it might actually be a junkyard. I can’t help but wonder why the town hasn’t condemned it and turned it into more park land.

Anyway, we drove in there and found a perfect spot to view the river. The first thing I saw when I got out of the van was the trailer in the image above. Naturally, I couldn’t resist taking the photo. I figure either someone was pretty mad at whoever lived there, or maybe down at the other end is spray painted “dirtbag”. Kind of his-and-hers designated parking for the trailer set.

So we did our bit, looked at the ice on the river, took some photos, and turned to leave. Standing by the trailer door was a bona-fide redneck, loudly telling some friends “He better not be takin’ no pictures of my fuckin’ house”. He repeated it several times, clearly wanting to get some reaction from me, or intimidate me, or something. Sorry fella. 1) It isn’t a house, it’s a trailer. And a crappy one at that. 2) Way too late, dude. That ship already sailed. 3) I’ve got the same build, same messy beard, and same disheveled long hair, so your appearance isn’t the least bit threatening to me. Though I do at least have a passing acquaintance with soap.

Ah well, at least I got one interesting picture that day.