Surviving the Stroads

 

This morning Travalon and I got in the car and drove to Rock Cut State Park in Illinois, where we took a snowy hike. We were almost to Chicago when I really needed a bio-break, so we stopped at a mall in Schaumburg. They had a food court with bathrooms, and also a stand that sold Mideastern food, which made me very happy because falafel is a little healthier than what you can get at most of those mall food stands. We got to our bed and breakfast, the Harvey House (named after the movie) in Oak Park, and my uncle came over. The three of us walked to downtown Oak Park and checked out an Irish shop (Travalon and I are always suckers for Irish shops), then we had dinner at a Moroccan restaurant called Grape Leaves. That was so good! Of course, it was similar to what I had for lunch: more hummus, more veggies, more pita bread. I also had baba ghanouj and these cigar-shaped things made of phyllo dough stuffed with chicken and dusted with powdered sugar - so messy but so good. Then we came back to the bed and breakfast, which has a wonderful sitting room with a fireplace, and my uncle regaled us with tales of his own adventures and stories about Hemingway and his relatives. 

Here are some photos from today. At the mall where we stopped, there was a Peppa Pig store, and they had this trolley with Miss Rabbit driving that kids could go into, but as far as I know it didn't move.

This train did move. I should have made a video - it's so cute! We had a good view of it from up above, where the food court in the mall is.

I loved these colorful lanterns in the Moroccan restaurant.

Now we are watching the Badgers play in the Las Vegas bowl. When I asked Travalon what I should call this blog post, he said "Surviving the Stroads," because in suburban Chicago there are a lot of ugly stroads with a ton of traffic on them. I told him how I had read an urban planning article about how roads are lovely pathways with rapid speeds and pretty scenery that go from one distant place to another, and streets are cute pathways with slow speeds and good sidewalks with houses and little shops along them, but a stroad is an unholy combination of the two, very wide and unsafe for pedestrians but with businesses (usually chains) along them. The speeds are higher than a street, but not quite as high as a road, and they are ugly and frustrating. Everyone hates them, and they shouldn't exist. The urban planner writing this article says pathways should either be getting you somewhere (road) or be the place you are going (street). There is no purpose to a stroad, so they should quit creating them.

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