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Thanksgiving Trip

Posted by Dutchman Sunday, November 29, 2009

Early Thursday morning, Zach, Tyler, and I loaded up the Envoy and headed for Illinois. More specifically, we were headed to Shabbona for Thanksgiving at my sister’s home. We left around 6:30 a.m. There was very little traffic. There was a light rain off and on the whole way. South of Lansing, we saw several flocks of Sandhill Cranes. There were probably around 50 to 60 altogether. They were probably gathering for the flight south.

We were headed west. As we approached Shabbona, which is about 50 miles west of the Chicago suburbs, we saw dozens of wind turbines. My sister says that these have been built all around Shabbona and DeKalb in the last few months. There is some controversy amongst the farmers and small towns in the area over these gigantic wind mills. Some are worried about the noise they may create, once brought online. Others are happy, as they will rake in lots of dollars from the land they lease for each one installed. My sister tells me that Illinois has set a goal to have 10% of their energy provided by renewable sources by 2015 and 25% by 2025. This sounds like to little to late to me. I wonder if Illinois will have the fossil fuel to produce the other 75% in 2025.

Later in the day, we went up to Loves Park where my parents live. On Saturday, we returned to Michigan after first passing the sky scrapers of downtown Chicago and the Skyway bridge where we could see the blue water of Lake Michigan out past the boarded and decaying suburbs.

As we traveled, we listened to the audio book “Charles Kuralt’s America”. This was written after his retirement as he visited 12 different favorite locations over 12 months. It makes me think of places that I would like to take the boys before they grow up.

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1 Responses to Thanksgiving Trip

  1. Anonymous Says:
  2. How about Leadville?

     

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I'm a middle aged divorced father living with my two sons. We like to canoe, bicycle, fish, camp, play baseball, and spend money when we want and where we want, without permission from anybody. HA!

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