Life at the Cannell/Daly Farm, Winnebago, IL

Blog Update From Farm Today I will take a break from organizing and packing for our upcoming trip so I can update you on what has been happening at the Cannell/Daly Farm. Here is the farm house where Elaine spent part of her childhood years:

And here is a view from the front porch showing our lovely parking spot, not far from the house and with some of the corn fields on our other side:

Besides doing some fixing and cleaning in our rig, we have been having some social times with the Daly Family. Here are a few of them gathered around the kitchen table:

From left to right are Elaine, her brother-in-law Dennis Daly, her sister Georgeanne Daly, Georgeanne’s grandson Alan, and Alan’s Mom, Lana. Georgeanne’s son, Tom is in the background. When people aren’t socializing inside, they can be found out on the front porch:

Here is Lana with her oldest daughter, Lea

Several days last week Elaine and I went into Rockford with Georgeanne, as her guests, and were able to work out at the local YMCA. The Y is located right near a nice park on the Rock River, so afterwards, we went for a nice walk on the riverbank path. Here are some ix of the large, nice homes along the river:

There was also this unique rock sculpture called Rock Guardians:

Last weekend we went out to breakfast with Georgeanne and Dennis to a place in Wisconsin (only about 15 miles from the farm):

Dennis drove us to a nearby farm where the farmer decided he was an artist and put some of his equipment up as art pieces:

Tuesday evening Lana took Georgeanne, Elaine and me to Anderson Gardens in Rockford, which is a Japanese Garden where they have evening music concerts on the lawn in the summer. First we walked around the very lovely gardens:

There were very large koi in the lake at the gardens:

In the middle of the lake was a fairly large turtle:

The weather was perfect, and we enjoyed walking over some of the bridges over the lake:

There are even several waterfalls:

Elaine had fixed a very nice picnic lunch/dinner for all of us, which we enjoyed, and it included the last of our lobster (which we brought back from Maine in the freezer).

The musical group wasn’t that good, so we left at intermission and drove over to the rehab hospital to visit Mary Sue, Elaine’s sister who is recovering from hip replacement surgery. I haven’t taken a picture of her yet, because I have been waiting for her to feel like she is in a bit better shape, so it doesn’t feel like an intrusion. I will try to include one next time. Last night there was a big party here because Lana & Tom’s daughter, Lea is going off to college tomorrow. It was jointly put on by them and the parents of one of her classmates named Arthur, so the cake was for them both:

Here is a picture of Lea (in the middle) with a school friend (left) and her sister-in-law (right).

The party was fun, we met some of the friends, and there was lots of good food. Tonight we will be eating it again because there were lots of leftovers! Wednesday we will be leaving our rig here, driving our car to a hotel in Chicago, and staying overnight there because we have an early flight on Thursday to Copenhagen. We have rented an apartment there for 2 days, then we will board the Vision of the Seas for a 5 day Norwegian fjords cruise. Once that gets back, we stay one more night in Copenhagen at a very nice hotel provided free by Royal Caribbean because we are doing 2 cruises back to back. Then we board the Brilliance of the Seas which stops at some islands off the coast of Scotland (Faroe Is.) and then several days in Reykjavik, Iceland, before we get back to Newark. We fly back to Chicago on Sept. 21, stay overnight again, then drive back to the farm for Elaine’s sister’s reunion. Next report on this blog will probably be from a foreign country!!!