Allie Oop Photography Blog » Adventure

Breakfast Adventures

allison — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 03:02:46 +0000

Sometimes you just get the itch. My sister taught me about adventures. While we lived together after college we would take our saturday mornings that she didn’t work and go test out a new breakfast place each week. We were on a mission to find the best one. Even when we were on vacation up north with our parents we made it our goal to find a great, off the beaten path breakfast place. We were staying at a cabin on Lac Vieux Desert Lake, which is cut in pieces by wisconsin and Michigan. One morning we were going to the post office for some reason and stopped for breakfast. I think we stopped at the Pine Cone Cafe. I’m not 100% sure on that because we never wrote it down. They had good hash browns, which is usually our mission, good hash browns. The next trip we made, it was a miserably cold one, we were heading up from Eagle river to see the waterfalls in Michigan and we found an adorable pie shop and cafe on a little road that we were on. i can’t figure out where we were or what state we were even in, but it was good, and a nice break from the rain that we were driving in. Those are only 2 of our fabulous breakfasts.

These adventures are part of why I get the ITCH. I’ve had the itch a lot since moving to Minnesota, but I am weirdly too chicken to go too far. My best friend and I went on an adventure, but thats for another post. Usually M and I get the itch when my boyfriend has Drill, which is perfect. We have now decided that from this point on when he is gone for his once a month training, we shall try and go on an adventure. After our last adventure, which I realized I didn’t actually write about yet, we had the itch. Mind you I have just been home for thanksgiving, and she’s been home a few times. But going home and going on an adventure are two VERY big differences! On this adventure last weekend I picked a direction, and found a diner/cafe to go to. Surprisingly it wasn’t as far away as I thought it was. We went to the Bridge Street Cafe, in Rockford, MN only about 30 minutes from Minnetonka. We pulled in just in time, right after we sat down a middle school basketball tournament showed up, as there aren’t many places to eat in rockford. We were kind of the odd people out in this restaurant. There was a table of guys in camo, either going hunting or going out ice fishing, a few older couples that were regulars, a Bon Jovi look alike and all the basketball kids and their parents. I ordered “Blueberry Pancakes with Meat” and M ordered the “bridge street Scramble”. When I received my pancakes with “meat”(aka thick cut bacon), there were no blueberries, I didn’t feel like complaining since they had gotten really busy and I like pancakes in anyway shape or form. M’s scramble was okay, the hash browns weren’t very crispy or seasoned. but they were decent. Unlike the syrup from Duluth (which you’ll learn about soon enough) this was normal syrup, possibly real maple but I’m not 100% sure. After brunch we had a few hours to kill before we needed to be home to do homework and make candy, so we headed to see the bridge that the cafe was named for and drove around the country a bit. Nothing too exciting was found, maybe heading west isn’t too great after all. We shall see what going Northwest or south takes us next time!

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The Adventure that started it all.

allison — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:59:15 +0000

Many many years ago my bestfriend, Marni and I went on an adventure. It was a spur of the moment, jump in the car with a few bottles of water, some snacks, and NO GPS. We headed south, from our apartment in Des Moines. No game plan, no idea where we were going. We headed to the in Indianola, Iowa, only miles from our apartment. It was a bust, but we really didn’t have any expectations. Next we went down a random road, where we saw a sign for a winery. We tasted some wine, found one we liked and hit the road again, stopping breifly to pet some horses that we passed on the road.

We avoided the highways as if they were the plague. Since our hands weren’t very clean anymore from the horses we stoped at a gas station to wash them, where we met a man with a truck full of goats.
What we quickly learned was there was a baby goat in the front seat of the truck, who was only a few weeks old.
.

We briefly stoped in Leon, Iowa

and saw the smallest Hy-Vee Ever. It was roughly the size of a house!
This is where the best part happens!! Even though I drove a Toyota Camry, I had in my head that I REALLY drove a truck. Out of the corer of my eye I saw something in an empty field. As spring was just beginning, nothing was really growing yet, but I saw an old abandoned Car.

Little did I know this would be the beginning of a many year long obsession. I drove up into this field, and we found 2 old cars and an old truck. They were so beautiful! We immediately created a story about the above car, it was missing it’s license plate, which was laying about 10 feet away. The car looked like someone had just dropped it there. So being that it’s Iowa, we decided that this car was dropped there in a tornado. The car not too far away was to beautiful for words in my eyes.

It’s face just spoke to me, it looked so sad, and frowning. To our far left, near a large quarry sat a lovely Ford Truck.

This truck reminded me very much of the toy truck that I had played with in my sandbox when I was little. I loved that truck and this one looked exactly like it! Thankfully no one saw us or came to see what we were doing, but then we hightailed it out of there as soon as our photographic needs were filled.

We then stoped at the Russell Stover second’s store. Not buying anything though. And across the parking lot, we took pictures on an old rail car, that was announcing the entrance into Missouri. We hadn’t exactly intended to go to missouri, but what happens happens! We drove down Highway 70 past the Kansas City Royals Stadium, commenting on it as we are both huge baseball fans. Then briefly into the city of Kansas city. Stopping at a place near the riverfront or the Power and Light district to go to the bathroom. After looking at the map, we decide that we’ve made it this far, lets just go look at KU. Heading to lawrence as the sun went down, we discussed what we should do, find a hotel for the night… text our friends/relatives that live there and see if we could sleep over or just head back to Des Moines. We drove into the Kansas university campus, looking for their student union so we could use a computer and facebook some friends. After taking pictures infront of the Kansas Jayhawk we headed inside, facebooked some of my friends from camp and Marni’s cousins. While in the Student union we watched all theses highschoolers in super fancy dresses going through, apparently it was prom, which was held at the Union. After facebooking some friends, we headed to stop into some hotels to see if there were any cheap rooms available, there weren’t so, we headed to Culvers to have some dinner and discuss our options. As we sat down to eat, my friend Erin called, and said she lived just a few blocks away! She and I were bunkmates at Camp during her first year. She is an awesome Texan who I hadn’t seen since we all parted ways in 2000 after our trip to Israel. Erin came over an met us and invited us to sleep over at her apartment that night!

The next morning we headed out and hit the road back to Des Moines, as we needed to be back in time for our friend’s birthday dinner. Thankfully by taking normal highways on the way back it took us MUCH less time to get back!

As so concludes our first of many adventures.

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My new life

allison — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:11:27 +0000

Well I haven’t posted in a a month. I haven’t posted anything worthwhile all year. This year has been crazy between the surgery, being sick ALOT, job hunting, apartment hunting and now the final push, moving. I hate moving. Moving is a HUGE fear of mine. I have put it off, pretending to look hard for a job in minneapolis, but not trying hard because moving to me is well we did it alot when i was little, it’s traumatic, it scares me to death. I am 99% packed, the cars are packed. My room is mostly empty.

When we moved here, I hated this house, I still don’t love it. Our old house in Onalaska was my mom’s dream home. It was brand new, it was clean, no one had lived in it before us. This house I thought was haunted, I wouldn’t stay in it alone. To this day it scares me, it creaks, and makes weird noises at night or when i’m alone.

It’s time. I start my new job monday, my new life starts tomorrow. I will wake up in a new place in a new bed (well air mattress, but I’ll have a new bed) new everything. It’s time.

My favorite Photos of Arianna’s First Birthday

allison — Mon, 23 May 2011 00:31:11 +0000

Such a beautiful little girl!

Day 142 – May 22 2011 An old truck soo close to home!

allison — Sun, 22 May 2011 02:09:56 +0000

I’ve passed this truck so many times. I never realized it was there, when I did realize it was there, I couldn’t figure out how to get to it. Finally in May I found my way! Very happy I did!

Day 177 June 27 Grant Wood’s American Gothic Statue – Chicago, IL

allison — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:43:06 +0000

Grant Wood’s American Gothic Statue is located just south of the Chicago Tribune building in a large courtyard next to a taxi stand.

The original painting “American Gothic” is housed in the Chicago Institute of Art.
J. Seward Johnson the sculptor of this giant piece also sculpted the famous “kiss” in San Diego
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“Chicago is a city laden with great outdoor artworks, not the least of which is this 25-foot interpretation of Grant Wood’s famous (and often parodied) painting American Gothic by renown sculptor (and Johnson & Johnson heir) J. Seward Johnson. The original painting resides just down the road at the outstanding Chicago Institute of Art, so who better to host this eccentric eye-catcher, which rests along the city’s Magnificent Mile at 401 Michigan Avenue. It’s awesome in its incongruity: earnest farm folk among gleaming skyscrapers, the Midwest’s salt of the earth among the Midwest’s most sophisticated urban backdrop, humble farmers blown up to giant urban dwellers. It’s also awesome in its execution as a really faithful and really beautiful work of art in its own right. And its just plain fun to walk around, gawk at, and have your picture taken in front of, as any really big thing ought to be. I’m not quite sure what the suitcase signifies… perhaps the sculptor is imagining the farmers are visiting the city for the weekend and are looking for their hotel. In any event, you can’t miss it, nor should you. It’s pitchfork perfect.

(text borrowed from http://eccentricroadside.blogspot.com/2009/05/chicagos-25-foot-american-gothic.html)

We spent today in Chicago. The morning began with me running to the farmers market for some sugar snap peas, and other veggies, then my two friends and I packed a picnic and headed to Ikea, as one of my friends is moving into a new apartment and needed some furniture. After walking around the HUGE Ikea for a few hours we were done. Successfully I might add, with a bookshelf, a chair and some other odds and ends. Thankfully we’re all pretty short so we managed to fit the tall bookshelf wood into the car and still had enough room to be comfortable. Once leaving there and going back into the hot car, we headed to O’hare to the park and ride in order to catch the Blue Line CTA train into the city. We couldn’t find the park and ride so we went to Rosemont to the CTA station there. It was quite the adventure trying to find parking. Once we got downtown, we got off the train and headed to Grant Park, where the Taste of Chicago was happening. We walked through the park, saw Buckingham Fountain, and had our picnic lunch.

By the time we had our picnic lunch it was nearing 4pm. So we quickly ate and headed back through the taste. To take a bus to the Museum of Science and Industry. We had tickets for the 5:15 entry into the new Harry Potter exhibit. The exhibit was awsome! It had many pieces of the costumes used from all of the movies, along with pieces of the sets and other details. So cool!! It really made my friends and I excited for the new movie which comes out soon!

After going through the exhibit, we headed back out into the Chicago heat, and went to a Cafe nearby that my sister and I had been to before. It has Gelato, which was prefect for such a hot day! After getting out Gelato we headed back towards the Museum and caught the 6 express bus back downtown. After sitting and enjoying the airconditioning of the bus, we got out and walked across the Chicago river where we saw the above sculpture. We walked a bit longer then headed back to the Blue line to go back to the car.

As we rode the train the sky darkened. We used our phones to check the radar and saw that a huge storm was coming, thankfully it didn’t hit until we were safely in our car. There was some magnificant lightening, and pouring rain but not as bad as it could have been. The only thing that we didn’t get to do that day was go to Summerfest, I had really wanted to go to the Barenaked Ladies concert that night, but we were too tired to head to Milwaukee. So we just headed home. A wonderful day in the “big” city.

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