Lycorne With an I instead of the Y it's French for Unicorn. I just like this spelling better.

We left the hotel Saturday morning, with the intent to find breakfast. Unfortunately the two restaurants recommended to Shane from the front desk clerk we unreachable. Both were on streets that couldn’t be reached because they were blocked off by the Police for what appeared to be flea markets or some such nonsense. Ok, McHenry is strange to say the least.

We ended up going back to Carpentersville and eating breakfast at a Denny’s. They had a wonderful breakfast that was very, very filling. After the breakfast we went around to some of Shane’s old haunts, as well as drove by his old houses. One of them is now red, and at another they have taken out the carport. While some of the roads have definitely changed, and businesses have changed, there are still a lot of things that have stayed the same.

We did manage to find a town to do a bit of railfanning on the way to Lake Carrol. They were serving dinner at 2 so we had made our plans to be able to arrive by 2. Unfortunately as we traveling east on 72 they had us rerouted south 15 miles, so by the time we went the 15 miles south, and the 15 miles to return, we ended up approximately 30 minutes late. Nothing like road construction to help you make your destinations on time. (Yes, I am being sarcastic!)

Once we arrived at the party I didn’t really know very many people. I knew Shane’s siblings and their families, his father and step-mother, his aunt Joanne and uncle Bob, as well as his cousin Ray. That’s all I really knew there, but everyone else was very kind.

Shane’s great uncle was putting together information on the genealogy which we gave them our information before we left. I look forward to getting a copy of the file from him so that I may add it to the information I have. (Ok, I don’t have much yet on his side of the family, but this is definitely a jump start on the information.)

We needed to leave a bit early so that Bob could get back in time to go to bed on Saturday night, since he needed to get up for work at 4 am on Sunday. We did manage to do some more railfanning on the trip back. And actually ended up having Subway for a late supper. (It was about 6 hours or so since we had last eaten, and Shane will get sick if he doesn’t eat regularly. He’s hypoglycemic and while it’s easy to out for, not eating can leave him sick for up to 2 days.)

It was about 10:30 when we finally arrived back home. After we arrived home and everything was brought in, Bob went to bed, and Shane went up to talk to his mother for the next 30 minutes. Apparently it was very important that she had a complete trip report minutes after we arrived.

Once we finally started moving, we drove for a bit and then departed from the interstate. It’s so much easier to railfan if you’re not on the interstate. With Shane’s GPS, at least there was no worry about getting lost. Shane and Bob found several places not only to watch trains, but also to look over cars and take pictures.

Finally around 3:30 as I recall, we arrived at Jim Carney’s in Palatine, IL Shane was asked down there to help Jim fine tune his RailOps. (It’s a computer program for handling switch lists for running trains for a model railroad.) Jim has a wonderful looking railroad, and Shane mentioned it was a pleasure to run which he has done in the past. After spending several hours there, Jim took us out for supper at The Donkey Inn. They had great food by the way.

While we were there I did try to reach a cousin who we were trying to arrange to stay the night with. Unfortunately I was not able to get a hold of her, so once we finally left the restaurant we started heading towards Lake Carrol, which is where the reunion was on Saturday.

We started out by heading towards Carpentersville, IL. where Shane grew up and was sure that there were hotels for us to use. Unfortunately, the areas he was sure we would find a hotel were completely without any. Finally after driving around for a while, I convinced them to stop at the next gas station and I’d use the phone book to look for one. In the end we did indeed find a Super 8 that was about 20 minutes or so away from Carpentersville. When we arrived after 1:00, they only had two rooms left, one was a non-smoking with a king bed, the other was a smoking room with two double beds.

After checking out the smoking room, it was determined that it wasn’t too bad, and so we slept in that. When we stopped bob said the smoke wasn’t bad, but by morning it was much more noticeable. It was in the mattresses, the shower curtain, and most likely the filters on the heating and cooling unit in the room. But when we had arrived the night before, it was a place to sleep, and at that time, THAT was the most important to all of us.

We planned and executed a trip to Illinois. We were planning on leaving at 6 am Friday morning. Unfortunately a few thing intervened. The morning started with my rising at 5:15 so I could take a shower before we left. Just as I finished my shower, I heard Bob calling for Shane.

After I said he was still in bed, Bob awoke him. Apparently Bob had been awaken to having something cold and wet dripping “on the crack of his ass” (his exact words). When Karen used the bathroom sometime during the night, it overran when she flushed it. Then the water soaked through the floor, then it soaked through the drywall in the basement ceiling so that it could drip on Bob.

After Shane shut off the bathroom water, he awoke and had a word or two with his mother. We found enough items to use as buckets to catch all the dripping water. Yes there was a LOT of dripping water. It soaked a good potion of Bob’s bed, and some other things. He threw the bedding in the wash and then in the drier before we left.

Of course that wasn’t our only delay Friday morning. Shane was going to email Jim Carney that we had a late start. Unfortunately his email program wouldn’t open. It kept saying unable to find server. When we attempted to find out why it wasn’t possible to get to our sever. While the server was online apparently the DNS wasn’t working properly. This naturally started us path of seeing why it wasn’t working. Apparently the nightly cpanel stable updates decided that it would update named but it didn’t update the bind libs. (If that’s Greek to you, think of it this way: it decided that it was going to do an update but half of what it needed for the update it forgot to include.) This means that not only was the DNS down, it couldn’t be restarted until the bind libs were added.

Since we were unable to do anything about it remotely, we reported it to the server farm an the did what they needed to take care of it. Apparently they were aware of the problem, and it did require rebooting . Once we knew they were aware of it, and taking care of it (they apparently did our dedicated server first), we attempted to start out on our trip.

We did have three more errands before we could get out of town. The first one was the gas station, like everyone else we needed to gas up for our trip. The second one is the ATM, just like everyone else, some cash on hand is good for every trip. And third, Bob needed an oil change. It ended up being around 8:30 before we really departed from town.

Today is offically our first wedding anniversary. This morning we joined Bob for the 20th Anniversary and investiature of the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus. Bob is a Knight of Columbus, so this was a very important event for him. Shane and I were both happy to be able to be there for him.

After the ceramony lunch was catered by Famous Dave’s. It was a good lunch. Luckily they had pork sandwiches as well as chicken, since I DO NOT eat chicken at all. After the lunch we then went to Ron Copher’s. It was enjoyable to run his trains as always.

When we returned home, my sister brought over the cake topper from our wedding cake. My mother certainly knew how to take care of it last year when we asked her, because this cake was as fresh and good as if it were our wedding day. Apparnetly there had been a bit of work looking for it, since now that mother’s gone no one knew what exactly she had done with it.

It turned up in an ice cream bucket. Common sense says the only way she could have gotten it in there in the first place was to have frozen it and then placed it in the bucket. There was plastic wrap around it as well.

Actually our anniversary is tomorrow, but we are celebrating it today. Our plans were to go to North Freedom, WI to visit the Mid-Continent Railway Museem. We had visited on our honeymoon and decided that it would be best to do it for our first anniversary as well. I enjoy looking over the museum and always enjoy the train ride. Sure it doesn’t travel very far, and then it turns around to return, but it’s always an enjoyable ride. This year Bob, went with us. Actually without him we wouldn’t have made it there ourselves.

Our our way we stopped in New Lisbon, to view the Milwaukee Caboose. And then we stopped at the hobby shop in Elroy as well. It was there that Shane picked out his anniversary present. He chose an Athern ready-to-run engine in the 25th anniversary Wisconsin Central colors. We agreed that he could have that for our anniversary and for me, I would be getting some new African Violets and supplies for my collection.

I do have to say though it was an extremely hot day. In fact, I felt it was too hot for me to walk around and view the different cars and engines in the sheds at Mid-Continent Railway Museem. But I still found the ride in the caboose to be great fun!

This evening we ate at North Country Steak Buffet. It was a great end to a great day.

Earlier this evening, there was an Amber Alert locally. It was for the 12 year old half-sister of David (Shane’s nephew). Apparently she had been abducted around 4:30 this evening. I heard about the amber alert around 7:30 pm. By 10 she had been located and was either home with her family or on the way there. The details I received were sketchy.

Apparently she had been taken by someone of Asian decent, in a white car, who wore his cap backwards. My details said that this was supposedly the ex-boyfriend who was harassing her. I really only had vague details, but this is also supposition that she went with him willingly. I on’t know what actually happened. I may never know the true details.

I had never heard a local Amber Alert in action before. It’s sad that the world is coming to such a place where it’s necessary to have something like the Amber Alert System, but I am glad it worked as well as it did. And as quickly. I guess if the world is coming to a time when such things are necessary, it’s good to learn they can work very quickly.

My nephew Chris is in Little League. Today they had their tournaments on French Island. He had a few great plays, he hit someone in, had a couple of walked in runs, did a great job at First Base. They played at 9:30, 12:30 and 2. As you can image the kids did get tired. Especially all the pitchers, but what else can you expect when you have the kids play 3 games?

After the first game he had about an hour before he needed to be back to get ready for the 2nd game. So Shane, Bob, Chris, Andi and I went to Fish’s for tacos. Andi, Chris and Bob had never been there before. They all decided that Shane had already shown me, and that is that Fish’s has GREAT tacos. They’re huge and only $1.25 each. Can’t say that isn’t a good buy, especially with all the meat they put on them.

I haven’t yet mentioned that Chris’ team won their first two games. By the third game though I think everyone on the team was a bit more tired. I don’t think the rain during the 2nd game helped. I know that Chris’ tee-shirt was soaked. Worse, is that the shirt was 100% cotton, and when cotton is wet it becomes very very cold to wear. It becomes wet and cold against your skin taking all your warm away with it. I wonder if how wet everyone ended up had something to do with how they ended up playing their 3rd game? Who is to say, but I can definitely wonder.

Oh, one last comment before I leave this subject, I may nto know much about baseball but the empire on that field was terrible. A number of his calls where way out of line, calling strikes when the ball almost hit the batter. Even I know that’s a ball not a strike. Ahh well, I don’t think I’ll have to hear him umpire again soon so I guess I can leave it go at that.

Today we had a family reunion. My cousin and her family were back to the local area from Washington State. My father lives on the edge of Deer Wood Park so the plan was to have a pot luck with food and such in the garage, but let the kids play in the park after.

In general the day went very well, except my father wasn’t even home for it himself. He works Saturday afternoons at the Yard Waste Disposal area. So we used his garage and house while he was at work. He has said it was ok, and I certainly thought h had planned to either work the morning shift instead or take the day off. He did neither.

It was great to see the everyone. It was much better than last time I saw most of these people. I don’t know about you, but I never liked that funerals typically end up as the family reunion. It’s so much better when you can plan the reunion to be enjoyed rather than last minute notice and a very bad time.

While it was good to see all these people, but I must say that in my opinion the day was hot. I never liked hot days, I am a firm believer that it should never get about 85 never below 60 and have a week at snow at Christmas. It was a hot day, and while I managed to keep myself in the shade most of the time, it was still hot, and there really wasn’t enough of a breeze to cool it down.

After most of the relatives left, I went in the house for a while. It was nice there with the AC on, but with as many people as we had there the house would have gotten very warm if we were all inside. It was a good counter to the heat that had been outdoors.

It was great to talk with Jean and her family. They decided to packed up and leave about 5:45. Scot had decided that it would be easier to drive at night and let the kids sleep in the van while they travel. No they were driving all the way back to their home, but to his parents before flying back to their home.