Trip 12: Springfield, Illinois

The day after our Indianapolis football debut, we were on the road again like all good teams.  We were off to Springfield, Illinois!

I will admit to sleeping through most of this drive, even though it wasn't too long - after a while the tired just catches up to you!

When we arrived, the heat index was at 127 degrees, and it stayed that way for the entire time we were in town.  Despite being the land of Lincoln, I was tired enough that I decided to take the city off - we'd had some recovery time in Charlotte, but at this point I was just off of my medication and wanted to take things a bit easy.  Unfortunately, that meant I missed out on seeing the old downtown Springfield, which is by all accounts amazing and a great tribute to the era of Lincoln.

On the other hand, it meant that I spent a lazy first afternoon in town doing laundry (exciting, I know), and hung out with D and L all the next day.  We went to Lake Springfield, where we'd planned on renting Wave Runners for the afternoon, but they turned out to be so expensive that the guys only rented them for a half hour, and I only paid to tag along with one of them, not for my own rental.

Still, that half hour out on the water was an absolute blast.  Not only was it a great way to see the lake - tons of fish jumping, and really wild shorelines with just trees right down to the water, no beaches, and lots of birds and waterfowl along the shore - but it was really a ton of fun.  I rode behind D and almost fell off a few times, but we caught air and splashed at L and in general loved every second of it.  It's like motorcycles on water; seriously, I need to do this again!

Because we couldn't spend the whole afternoon out on the lake like planned, we decided we'd go to the water park just down the road from our hotel since it was still 90-some degrees in the shade (heat index of 126, today).  We arrived at about 4 pm, and the guys got a little sidetracked by the other offerings of the park, so we went first to the driving range, where D showed us all up and I attempted real, non-mini-golf for the first time (results were so-so).

L's awesome skillz.

Then we went to the batting cages, where I was a failure but still won by not getting smacked by the slightly-off-track pitches like L did.  We decided then to head into the water park - only to find out that they'd be closing in an hour.  Seriously?  It's 100 degrees out, and the sun stays out til 9 pm - why would a water park close at 6 pm?  I still don't get it.

The sun at 8:30 pm.

But it was probably for the best - we went back to the hotel in time for our pre-event meeting and did some set up at the site before coming back and crashing.

The event then next day was hot.  Really, really hot - our hottest yet.  Don't get me wrong, it was still very successful - but it was so hot that even the media decided it was too hot to have an event.  Luckily the on-site agents agreed, and it was a short event, but it still took us nearly an hour longer to set up, and probably twice that to tear everything down.

What can I say, the water guns were an excellent purchasing decision.

The next day saw the drive up to Minneapolis, Minnesota, for our next event, which took us through one of my new favorite states, Wisconsin.  Why is it one of my new favorites?  Well, aside from the beautiful scenery and geography, you can buy fresh cheese curls at the gas stations.  Also, the Amish set up bake sales at the gas stations, and they have really good cookies.

Like I said before, I've got my priorities straight!

-Beth