Galena

August 5-7, 2015

This year’s epic trip begins by dropping Lego off to be spoiled by Oma and Opa. We know he is in safe hands!

We had a very beautiful drive to Galena. We stopped in Madison at the State Capital to show the kids and were able to go up into the dome. I always forget how gorgeous that building really is, so impressive!

 Once we were in Galena, we celebrated Carson and Grandpa's birthday by going to Happy Joe’s Pizza (discovered that it was a chain restaurant).  As you can see, Jeff had just as much fun playing the games as all the kids did. Carson got to open a bunch of birthday gifts and just about all of them coincidentally were perfect to take along on a road trip!

The cousins had fun playing outside, playing board games, watching a Harry Potter movie marathon and going swimming. Spencer discovered that he LOVED going down the slide! Carson went down the slide once too. It started raining out but wasn’t lightning, so we had the pool to ourselves for quite a while until it started pouring and the poor lifeguards made us get out. We even saw a rainbow on the way back to the house since the sun came back out.  

Spencer's first time going down the slide by himself. Within minutes, no one needed to catch him!

Carson was a little more timid, but did a great job on the slide too!

Jeff and I also had the opportunity to sneak into town for a bit. We were planning to go to a small quilt show, but their advertising didn't state that it was a night time show so we missed it. Instead, we walked up and down Main Street Galena. Galena is a walled town, and can close the gate if the Mississippi River and its tributaries flood. Ulysses S. Grant also grew up in this town and a lot of Main Street and the surrounding houses pre-date the Civil War. 

You can see the walls as you enter the downtown.

Many of the buildings are really really old. Very quaint shops.