Pere Marquette aka Operation Evacuate Chicago

Back in October, Freeman (who is much more in the know about these things than I am) got word that our city was hosting NATO and G8 Summits consecutively and launched Operation Evacuate Chicago.

 Yes, the plan was NATO would be held at the marker on the lower right-hand side of the map and G8 would be at the marker at the upper-left hand side (about 3 miles from the first marker).   That little marker right in the middle...that's our building.  Yup.   So Freeman reserved some time off and we nicknamed that week Operation Evacuation or something like that.   As I am sure you've heard, G8 was subsequently moved and NATO went off without any major incident, but we figured that being out of town versus spending the weekend (holed up) in our unit with three kids sounded like the best plan.

So, onto the fun part of this post.  We decided to do a little family trip to Pere Marquette State Park along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and some Grammy/Granddad time in Chatham (more on that in a future post).  Freeman and I had done some hiking at Pere Marquette pre-children and thought it would be a great first family vacation.

Upon checking-in, we got a map indicating the location of our cabin.  Here's Hamilton using the map to lead us.

And here's where he realizes he needs a lesson in map reading.

Here's Tonti cabin, our home for a couple of nights.  Since returning from our vacation, our children have created a Tonti cabin in our living room almost every day and then asked if we could please sleep at the real Tonti cabin again tonight.

I have a suspicion it had something to do with this bunk bed, which was promptly inspected for safety and bounciness.

All that jumping warranted a snack.  Who is that little girl next to Veronica, you ask?  Why, that's baby Caroline.  They do grow so fast!

 The first evening, we checked out the Lodge and taught Hamilton how to play checkers and then took an evening swim after dinner to tire the troops.

The next morning, before our first hike.

Hamilton was appointed the position of scout and took his role very seriously.  He made sure we stayed on the red heart trail.

What's at the top of the stairs?

They didn't really appreciate the river view.

The spider web was pretty cool, though.

Here's Hamilton at a second overlook after spotting the beaver lodge.

Veronica was a good sport, but it was at about this point that she really wanted a ride.   Good thing this overlook was the end of the trail.

So back to the car we went.

After lunch, we crossed the Illinois River on a ferry boat (a first for any of us) and let the kids nap in the back while we checked out the lovely rolling landscape of Calhoun County (incidentally, I have a cousin-once removed and a second cousin who live there...though we didn't find out until later).  For us flatlanders, it was a welcome change in scenery.  Then we headed back to the lodge for more checkers and running around, dinner and swimming.  Somewhere in there we relaxed at the cabin...where our doesn't-really-ever-nap boy looked something like this...

The next morning, we undertook one more hike before heading back to Chatham.  Hamilton again served as our scout, this time on the blue triangle trail.

Veronica wanted a picture as a scout, too.

Here I am trying to teach them something I know very little about on the side of the path.  Note to self, brush up on local earth science before embarking on another trip.  Oh well, they know that if I don't know, we can research the answer later!

Sweet girl...don't let all that sitting up fool you...she's still a baby, yet!

After our hike, we checked out the little nature/information center.  Hamilton was immediately drawn to the bones and skeletons (go figure).

Such a bad picture, but I love it because it tells so much about Hamilton.  I pointed at the poster on the wall and told him it listed the names of all of the flowers pictured.  He immediately sat on the ground and asked me to read it to him and repeated after me.

All in all, so thankful that NATO was uneventful...but also so thankful that the anticipation of it served as the catalyst for a short and sweet family vacation in the woods.