Well as you can see we made it to Carbondale in one piece and still married even after spending five days in a vehicle together. We were greeted by Clete and Poppy McLeod - Chris' boss and his wife and their absolutely annoying and awful dogs Clifford and Aiden. (To be fair Aiden isn't that bad at all, he is a medium sized brown haired something. Clifford on the other hand I sincerely want to strangle on a daily basis. He is a deaf, partially blind, and semi-slow great dane. He is massive, noisy, and irritating at all times. Don't worry Clete hates him too)
Clete & Poppy
Our first weekend in town was full of excitement. Poppy made us dinner the first night and we got caught up with Clete about all the happenings in Carbondale and his plans for the athletes and programs. After a good night's sleep we spent Sunday wine tasting and touring the town. Poppy gave me tips and hints by showing me Wal-mart, Kroger, Macys, TJ maxx, Victoria Secret and one of the only Starbucks - you know all the important things in life. We met up with the guys and headed towards the Shawnee National Forest, which is literally 5 miles from town.
They have a wine tasting trail, which was definitely a different experience than wine tasting in Oregon. The wine is much sweeter and leans more towards fruity wines since this is orchard country, the reds really are no comparison at all. However, I think that the biggest difference is the atmosphere; in Oregon wine tasting is definitely a classier and snobbish experience, in contrast, here they serve hot dogs and ruffles chips. It is just a more casual, less prestigious tradition. I found my inner wine snob come out when we were tasting a flight of wines and the guy didn't rinse out our glasses when we switched from white to red. (Haha a shout out to Rick Fletcher who would have a heart attack!)
Cool Instant - while driving up to a winery we spotted a real life beaver! Never in my life have I ever seen a beaver in real life. It is nice to know that Chris and I aren't the only ones in Carbondale. Go Beavs!
Ok so here is a little more about Carbondale
Carbondale is at the bottom of the state of Illinois on the edge of the Shawnee National Forest. It is about 20 miles off of one of the main Interstates (I-57), which is really convenient for visiting Tyson up North. It is the largest city in the area and as you can see has a few small towns surrounding it. Clete and Poppy actually live in Carterville, which is about 6 miles out of town to the East. So our drive into town every day is absolutely gorgeous because we cross Crab Orchard Lake.
Carbondale is divided into quarters with Highway 51 running North/South and Highway 13 running East West. As you can see Southern Illinois University is a huge chunk of the town. Most of the businesses run along Highway 13 and the rest is residential area. Everything is mostly flat with a few little hills and thankfully there are actually quite a few trees. My biggest complaint about Carbondale is that everything is so spread out. It isn't like Corvallis where you can basically bike around to anywhere you need to go. There really is no organization to how the businesses developed. My saddest discovery was that the 'downtown' is really not a true downtown. At least nothing to be excited about. I miss Corvallis downtown!!!! It makes it so the town doesn't really have a home base for the community. Like in Corvallis the home base for students was campus, Monroe, or Peacock, then the community had the downtown area as their home base. Well from what I can tell that does not exist here.
To be honest I have had a little bit of a hard time adjusting. At first I was really excited, then I got really disappointed and a little bitter, and now it is starting to grow on me and I am getting a little more settled in. It has been an interesting month to say the least!
Many more stories to come including: Our First Easter, Road trip to Michigan, House hunting, and much more! So stay tuned in and patient as I try to overcome my writer's block and get all caught up :-)
Miss you all!
No comments:
Post a Comment