Rain threatened and briefly downpoured, but ultimately cleared up and it was a perfect fall night of camping in Southern Illinois for my college roommate's bachelorette party.
This has nothing to do with Americorps or Ohio Benefit Bank, but it was a much-needed break.
The bride-to-be (pictured above) and three other girls (plus one token guy, the boyfriend of one of the girls, who lived at the state park where we stayed) had a fun, but all-too-short getaway of faux-roughing it over grilled chicken, reminiscing, birdwatching, frogcatching, campfire, s'mores and squeezing inside a just-barely-big-enough tent (I slept great).
I say faux because we stayed near a research trailer, which was superghetto, but still offered running water and a toilet.
Besides the wasted chunk of gorgeous Sunday trapped in a car driving back home for work on Monday morning, it was a good weekend. Nice to get out of town.
The leaf above, by the way, was hung up on a single silken strand of spider's web so it was suspended in a falling position. It was beautiful and what I was looking at while the others -- research biologists all -- were peering through giant binoculars, discussing birds.
All-in-all, for driving seven hours one way just to sleep on the ground and drive back, it wasn't bad. Wasn't bad at all.
"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul. ...Keep close to Nature’s heart...and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean."
-John Muir
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