Spring Break Mini Vacation

A week before her spring break, Karen said she would like to go somewhere and not just sit around all week. I was game for this. She even suggested that we go to Springfield, Illinois, to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana Thomas House. I was also game for this. And the best part was I didn’t have to think up something to do. It was all there in front of me. So about a week out, we started planning routes, finding out when things were open, seeing if there were good restaurants, in general, doing all the things a fun vacation should involve.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007
We knew that the House was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so we figured we would drive down on Tuesday and start all the fun things the next morning. We left about 11:15am and were there by about 3:00 in the afternoon.

To make our drive easier, we got a couple of recorded books. One was Coyote Wind by Peter Bowen and the other was A Vineyard Killing by Philip R. Craig. We listened to Coyote Wind first because Karen had read several of the Gabriel Du Pré books and liked them a lot. There were 4 disks so it would be just about perfect for the drive down. When we finished the first CD Karen was putting it back into the sleeve and discovered to our horror that the second disk was missing. Argh! Did we want to keep on listening, missing the 2nd quarter of the story or start the other one? We started the other one. It was about a married, no account, ex Boston policeman who now lived on Martha’s Vinyard and solved mysteries from time to time. Since we had started with the other book and since this one was a little bit longer, we were only about half done when we got to Springfield.

Before we got there, as I was passing a car, I looked over and the other driver was tooling along with a yellow lizard, about 15 inches long, climbing up his shoulder and onto the top of his head. I wish I had dropped back and got Karen all set up with the camera, but alas, I muffed it. From the description of the beast, Lance said we probably saw an monitor lizard. But I don’t think so. It looked like this:

We checked in at the Motel 6 around 3:30. There was sign at the desk saying they had wireless internet access for $2.99 so we got that in case we wanted to do some last minute restaurant research. We got back into the car and drove into town to to scope out locations and see the sights. Then back to the motel to fill up the rest of the time before our 6:30 dinner reservation.

We listened to the local news, Springfield is Illinois’s state capitol and saw Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, in a story about smoking in public places and how her next project was to stop people from smoking in their cars if they had children with them. This is an entry non-event don’t you think? Why would I put this in? Read on.

We went to dinner at Sebastian’s Hide-Out.

This might be the fanciest restaurant in town and is right in the downtown. We drove around a bit trying to find a parking place, but we figured it was right in the middle of happy hour and there were none to be found. We decided that Karen should get out and meet the reservation while I continued to find a spot. As luck would have it, as I let her out, there was a space open right across the street. I took it.

For an appetizer we had duck comfit with stilton and brie cheeses, roasted red peppers, and roasted garlic.

For dinner I had Beef tournedos w/Lyonnaisse sauce, garlic potatoes, and spring veggies. The veggies were asparagus and carrots and the carrots were the cutest things you ever saw. They were about 5 inches long and very conical shape and they had the stalks and leaves still on them. You just get the slightest hint of this in the picture below.

Karen’s dinner is a secret. We have a great picture of it but it was so nice, we decided to try to some or all of it at our gourmet club. So maybe I will show the picture of it after that’s over.

Karen asked if the chef would give her the recipe for some of the things, but he refused. He did tell the waitress how to make one of the things in a very general way. We tried it at home a few days later and it was very good, so that was enough I guess.

About 20 minutes into our meal and half an hour after we saw her on TV, the Illinois Attorney General came in and sat about 4 boothes away from us. I asked the waitress if that was her. She knew the woman was with a senator so she thought it was her. Then she asked the other waitress who was waiting on them and sure enough, it was. We never saw or heard of this woman before and then we saw her on TV and in person the same evening. Quite a coincidence.

We shared a Creme Brulee for dessert.

When we got back to the motel, Mission Impossible was on TV so we watched that and went to bed.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007
In the morning we got up and had breakfast at the Hen House restaurant which is right next door to the motel and checked out.

We arrived at the Dana Thomas House in time for the first tour and watched the end of a video that gives you a little bit of the history of the place. They will let you take all the pictures you want on the outside, but no cameras are allowed inside. Here are some views of the place. The inside pictures are copied from a book I bought in the gift shop.

Mrs Dana inherited the property the house sits on from her father. By that time she was already a widow and very wealthy. The house was Wright’s first to have no budget restrictions. Budgets were a thing he ignored anyway, but this one let him do it right. The house is pure Prairie Style and was built in 1910 for a cost of $60,000. It occupies a half block with a streets on two sides and a railroad track on a third side. When asked why she would ever build a house there, she said it was already the family homestead and beside she liked railroads, she was heavily invested in them. Here are some shots of the outside.

After the Dana House we drove over to a school nearby that had a library that Mrs Dana’s father had commissioned Wright to design. Interesting but no big deal.

Then we took a tour of the house Lincoln left when he was elected President. He had lived there for 17 years. It was a fairly upscale place for the times, not a log cabin which everyone in the country at the time thought he lived in. Unfortunately, they were in the process of painting it.

We could have gone to the Lincoln Presidential Library and museum but decided to drive to Hannibal instead. We listened to some more of our recorded book on the way, but it is a fairly short drive and we still had about one more disk to listen to when we arrived.

We checked in at a Bed & Breakfast place, Robard’s Mansion, and unpacked our bags. Then we drove around town a little, getting our bearings and looking at the other places we could have stayed and might have dinner at. We ended up going down by the Mississippi to hear the last disk. It was the exciting conclusion.

We still had a bunch of time to kill before dinner so we went back to the motel and took a short nap. We thought we might try a couple of places for dinner. One was by where we parked and listened to the tape. We figured we would go to that one first and have a beer and if it didn’t look too good we could go to the other place. As it turned out, we went to the second place.

The other restaurant’s claim to fame was that it had been a bordello well into the 1920’s. Those days are gone of course but they had fixed the place up and it was very nice. It was called Lulabelle’s. For an appetizer they had a big plate of boiled shrimp in the shell which was included in the price of the entre. Karen had a New York Strip smothered with gorganzola cheese and I had prime rib which contrary to normal practice had a rich, flavorful sauce.

When we got back to the B&B we watched 3 episodes of CSI, had a couple drinks and went to bed.

Thursday, March 15, 2007