You find, somewhat unexpectedly, that on a Sunday afternoon you’ve got a few hours to yourself. So you say to yourself: “Self, I should go out and kayak the Sangamon River. I could use a little vacation.” So you park your little red pickup a few miles downstream at Lake of the Woods park, ride your bike back home […]

  Carol and I took a hike up to “The Source”. To start out, we drove our rented Suzuki Jeep up the path to where the road ends, parked the Jeep and set out uphill on foot. It’s a lovely hike up through a tropical rain forest populated by banana trees and vervet monkeys. The trail started out relatively easy, […]

  Sangamon translates from the Potawatomie language as “the place where there is plenty to eat” Coincidentally, I grew up in this same kind of place, even though I was in North Florida. Of course, growing up, I always just knew it as “home,” and there was always plenty to eat. At home, the fridge was always well-stocked and a […]

  “Might I interest you in some refreshing Sangamon River water?” my new friend Keith Alexander asked as he pushed his mug my way. What was in his mug looked more like coffee with cream. Which in truth, it was. Keith is the Director of Water Management for the City of Decatur. Keith’s job is to extract and purify about […]

A popup ad on my Facebook excitedly promised “The End of Television!”   Well, I got pretty excited because I’d been waiting a long time for the moment when we finally got sick of TV and did away with it once and for all. One of my favorite movies is “Network” where people chuck their TVs out their upper-story apartment […]

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’ll get.  – Forest Gump I got the kayak on the river for the first time this year on that 50 degree day we had on Saturday a few weekends ago. Paddled upstream about a mile and a half. The river was up several feet, but still not over […]