I am having a horrible time keeping up with my blogging, so although this was a really fun trip, it's going to be a short and swee post!
Craig recently bought a new tent (larger than the last two). He was pretty excited about it, but we didn't have a camping trip planned until late August (Wyoming!), so he wanted to plan a short weekend trip somewhere. He also was itching to go hiking, so I suggested southern Illinois. He hadn't been there, so we agreed to "book it". Slowly but surely, this trip went from a camping trip for the two of us to a fun filled camping/winery/Kentucky Derby/Cinco de Mayo trip with lots of friends and family!! I love it when things like this turn out amazing :)
The only campers we had Friday night were my parents, Jen's mom Julie, and Craig and me. It was a pretty good time, but the real fun started the following day. Craig and I got up early to go hike while the rest of the gang slept in. I only took a few pictures, but it was very pretty!
The rock structures were really cool. They created a lot of what I am going to call caves :) and some cliffs that were a little bit scary to look off of! The first "cave" that we came up to was of course calling Craig's name. He immediately started climbing up on the muddy rocks and going back deeper into these rocks. I ended up going up the other side, which was a little bit more open. As I started to climb up, we both heard this whooshing noise and alarmingly looked at each other. Neither of us saw anything, but both of us heard it. We weren't sure what it was, but we knew it was some kind of huge bird. I was hurrying him to get the heck out of there, but he kept looking around up there.
As soon as he decided to continue hiking, these little guys caught his eye. I'm not sure if you can tell, but in the center of this picture there are two little baby birds huddled up next to each other. They have HUGE beaks for such little birds!! We both realized that what we heard previously must have been momma! We also realized that momma was probably not very far away and most likely keeping an eye on us and her babies. Sure enough, we looked up to find this.
I tried to get a closer picture, but failed. In case you can't tell, it's a giant turkey vulture!!!!!!!! You know, those awful looking birds that always play the mean scary characters in kids movies!
EEEEKK!!
I was completely ready to move along at this point.
That was the most exciting part of the hike. The rest of the hike pretty much consisted of us realizing how out of shape we were!! We agreed to start training before we went to Wyoming.
Anywho, we headed back to camp to cook breakfast and start getting ready for the day.
I was navigator all day, so I of course had to look up all of the addresses before we got out of cell range. (what would we do without iphones?!!) We started with Von Jakob, which I don't have a picture of for some reason, but here are our other three stops!
Craig recently bought a new tent (larger than the last two). He was pretty excited about it, but we didn't have a camping trip planned until late August (Wyoming!), so he wanted to plan a short weekend trip somewhere. He also was itching to go hiking, so I suggested southern Illinois. He hadn't been there, so we agreed to "book it". Slowly but surely, this trip went from a camping trip for the two of us to a fun filled camping/winery/Kentucky Derby/Cinco de Mayo trip with lots of friends and family!! I love it when things like this turn out amazing :)
The only campers we had Friday night were my parents, Jen's mom Julie, and Craig and me. It was a pretty good time, but the real fun started the following day. Craig and I got up early to go hike while the rest of the gang slept in. I only took a few pictures, but it was very pretty! 
The rock structures were really cool. They created a lot of what I am going to call caves :) and some cliffs that were a little bit scary to look off of! The first "cave" that we came up to was of course calling Craig's name. He immediately started climbing up on the muddy rocks and going back deeper into these rocks. I ended up going up the other side, which was a little bit more open. As I started to climb up, we both heard this whooshing noise and alarmingly looked at each other. Neither of us saw anything, but both of us heard it. We weren't sure what it was, but we knew it was some kind of huge bird. I was hurrying him to get the heck out of there, but he kept looking around up there.
As soon as he decided to continue hiking, these little guys caught his eye. I'm not sure if you can tell, but in the center of this picture there are two little baby birds huddled up next to each other. They have HUGE beaks for such little birds!! We both realized that what we heard previously must have been momma! We also realized that momma was probably not very far away and most likely keeping an eye on us and her babies. Sure enough, we looked up to find this. I tried to get a closer picture, but failed. In case you can't tell, it's a giant turkey vulture!!!!!!!! You know, those awful looking birds that always play the mean scary characters in kids movies!
I was completely ready to move along at this point.
That was the most exciting part of the hike. The rest of the hike pretty much consisted of us realizing how out of shape we were!! We agreed to start training before we went to Wyoming.
Anywho, we headed back to camp to cook breakfast and start getting ready for the day.
I was navigator all day, so I of course had to look up all of the addresses before we got out of cell range. (what would we do without iphones?!!) We started with Von Jakob, which I don't have a picture of for some reason, but here are our other three stops!
I only have a few pictures of the day so far. If I remember, I will try and update it more later! It was such a fun day. Not only was it Cinco de Mayo, but the Kentucky Derby was also on this day! That meant major celebration!! Here are a few pics :)
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| The Punke & Jeffers girls at Von Jakob with out Kentucky Derby Hats on! |
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| Without our mommas! |
This last picture was pretty funny. The cutting boards for the cheese ended up becoming paddles and turned into a huge, hysterical, practical joke. It invovled betting people that they couldn't reach from one end of the table to the other without bending their knees (so they were bent forward at the waist). Just as they discovered it was a pretty easy task.... WHACK! Liz unfortunately got the brunt of it.... she ended up really hurting afterwards, but it was SO funny while it lasted. Sorry Liz!
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