Everyday in the Life of the Harts: Mother's Day Weekend

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Mother's Day Weekend - Dubuque & Cubs

So, just as everything else this Spring is not going as planned...Mother's Day didn't go as planned either.

Matt & the kids surprised me a few months ago with tickets to Wrigley to watch the Cubs play the Washington Nationals...ON MOTHER'S DAY!!!! I was so surprised and thrilled to go to Wrigley as a family again and to watch my Cubs play against Davey Martinez's Nationals...oh my!!! Yep, if you remember from prior posts, Davey is pretty much my all time favorite Cubbie!

Sadly, there has been no baseball yet. Our trip to Chicago for an overnight (usually includes shopping and eating lots of good food!) and baseball got cancelled a while ago...and we've been hanging out at home for way too many hours.

Matt has been picking up extra on call hours at work so our time to get out and explore is very limited. Luckily, this past weekend (Mother's Day weekend) was open and the weather on Saturday was beautiful.

We discussed 4 or 5 options of where to drive for the day. We knew that our options were limited due to restrictions still in order in IL. When I woke up on Saturday morning, I quickly realized that a major migraine was forming so I took some medicine and headed back to bed for a bit - that worked and my head felt much better. Unfortunately, a good portion of our day was now gone which caused us to rule out a few day trip options due to time.

We decided to head north to Dubuque - see a few parks, find a few letterboxes and then head south along the river, home. After grabbing some lunch, we spent a lot of time at Eagle Point Park in Dubuque. This park is pretty special to me - it was the meeting place for our Swartout reunions for many, many years! Driving through and walking around really brought back some great memories!

This spot had a great overview of the Mississippi and Lock & Dam #11. We watched for 30-40 minutes as a barge came through the locks, very fascinating to watch!

Sadly, the Koi Pond had no water or fish. Matt recreated the same pose from August 2009 (see 2nd picture).

We left the park and headed over to the Wisconsin side to see the Lock & Dam up close. It was a wonderful day to get out and walk and enjoy the breeze along the river.

You can see Eagle Point Park across the river, on top of the bluff.

We left Dubuque and decided to head to IL to drive through Galena before heading south towards home.

Arriving in Galena - you'd never guess it was a warm Spring Saturday, late in the afternoon. The town was deserted. We saw a maximum of 10-15 people walking the streets. 8-10 of those were outside food establishments.

We hunted for a few letterboxes as we drove south. I called in our pizza order at Manny's Pizza in Savanna then we headed to a little island near Sabula, IA to eat our dinner. It was the perfect ending to our day together.

Mother's Day was overcast and chilly. We woke up and watched church then ate an early lunch. My kids gave me nice, heartfelt letters and they all gave me a new Obvious T-shirt (Cubs). I knew something was up when everyone came upstairs with their Obvious shirts on! We took some pictures and then watched Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Always a nail biter!! It was a great day of staying inside, not cooking and watching my Cubbies with my family. Couldn't ask for a better day!