The Summer Thus Far

It's been a while since I've written a blog post. It's not that I've been too busy to write but rather things have settled into a nice quiet routine in Champaign this summer. As a result there have been relatively little "eventful" things on which to report. I have worked myself into a routine of study, practice, and reading along with a 15-K training program that have kept my days structured and organized (I've only had a couple of days where I haven't been productive at all and spent my time playing lots of Snood).

In the meantime I've been auditioning students for next year's MCYO groups and preparing the ensemble for our Italy trip. We leave on Saturday. Like five days from now. It's kind of hard to believe because I just kind of fell into this whole thing. I haven't been to Italy since I was sixteen years old - I actually turned sixteen in Venice - so I'm pretty excited. If we had $4000 Kaia could have come along too but unfortunately our $7000/year combined income doesn't really allow for that at this point. Someday we will both return to Italy together and we won't be in the company of a student orchestra.

It's been terribly hot for the past three weeks so when the weather finally cooled off a bit we decided to take advantage of a beautiful day and go to Kickapoo State Park just 24 miles east of Chambana on the banks of the Kickapoo River. We spent a lovely afternoon hiking through the woods and along the shores of Clear Lake. It's not an enormous lake but it's a decent size - probably something like Half Moon Lake in Carson Park - and it was a three mile hike with some terrain changes. It was nice to get out of town and do something naturey. This summer has been a lot of driving (for me) and also lots of time in Chicago/suburbs and Champaign.

Here are some photos from yesterday's excursion:

We found a tiny waterfall along the trail.

Thank goodness we weren't on our bikes I mean, we can't afford a heavy fine.

We saw this little frog in the tall grass.

Here is the trail through the woods.

Overall it was a fine day and it gave us a taste of the outdoors. Later this summer we're going to take a backpacking excursion to northern Wisconsin at Copper Falls State Park. I'm looking forward to this because we haven't been camping since the very beginning of last summer. That was when we camped for one night at Perrot State Park near La Crosse, WI and got rained out for the rest of the weekend. Hopefully the weather will cooperate for us in August.

In the meantime I should probably start thinking about packing for my trip.