All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Hiking

Two Nights in Golconda (Near Garden of the Gods)

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We only had a weekend to getaway over our respective Spring Breaks, and didn’t want to drive too far, so I decided to figure out a trip that would take us to do some interesting hiking. I also wanted to stay somewhere reasonably interesting, which ended up being a bit of a challenge. We settled on visiting the Garden of the Gods (in Illinois, not Colorado) since we had heard wonderful things about it and knew a few people who had gone. I couldn’t find much information about what to do online, so I hope this post will be helpful to you if you plan a trip!

So the Garden of the Gods is a Wilderness area in the Shawnee National Forest, and honestly, we barely tapped the surface, but I’ll tell you what we did. But first, let me tell you where we stayed!

I had looked at some cabins closer to the Garden of the Gods, but they were either too expensive or already booked up. I realized that there were a few options in areas overlooking the nearby Ohio River though, and settled on a place with a jacuzzi and porch overlooking the river. That location has several varying options, and they are all part of the same place. (It is a former Catholic Retreat called San Damiano.)

It was about a 3 hour drive for us, which is about right for a weekend. We left around lunch on Friday and arrived mid-afternoon. Check in was easy (key in our room), and we immediately found that yes, the view was as advertised.

The place itself was…quiet and isolated. There were a few other cars there and we saw a couple out walking their dog, but otherwise it looked run down and abandoned (there was a large building that used to be perhaps a conference center, which looked simply closed during our visit, but maybe closed for good.) We unpacked the car and then took a walk, following a sign that said “to the Ohio River 1/3 mile”. Indeed! It was a trail that went around the bluffs, really a road, and then we were closer to the river level. We walked for about a mile, and kept thinking maybe somehow it would circle back around, but it didn’t, so finally we reached what seemed to be “the end” and turned back. We also explored a bit around the building we were staying as well, as there were some benches, statues, etc. to walk around and look at.

Part of the road might have been a boat ramp at one time, but looked a bit flooded.

We got back up to our room and went out on the porch for “Happy Hour” of cheese/crackers. The porch wasn’t entirely private, but we had our own space. The room we had was part of a building with four rooms, but only the one on the opposite end was occupied. There was a nearby building that had a couple on the end as well, and at this time everybody seemed to be out enjoying the view.

It did get a little chilly however, so we went inside and turned on the gas fireplace and started cooking dinner. We had what we needed to cook, but nothing extra! There were no wine glasses either, which I figured just meant that the place was tired of people breaking them, since they did have a wine bottle opener.

At one point, we saw our first barge!

You can see our excitement!

It was exciting, because we could see the barge from afar, coming around the bend, but then it slowly got closer and closer.

We went to bed early, after watching a few shows on Netflix: there was a tv but no internet, so I assume just a few local channels. Do bring your own downloaded entertainment!

Oh, and barges make more noise than you might think. After dark, we would hear them coming up and down the river.

The next morning we enjoyed coffee and watched the river more. It was a bit chilly and rainy so we mostly watched from inside.

Our next plan was to visit the Garden of the Gods. We did two hikes there, which I highly recommend. We started with the Observation Loop, which is a must do hike in the area. It’s short and quite easy: there’s a mostly stone path to follow, and you can go off path and climb more rocks, or you can just stay on the path.

These rock formations were huge!
This one looked like a turtle.
I think this was called the Devil’s Smokestack, but there’s a 40 percent chance that is just in my head.

After we hiked the Observation Trail, we drove to the Indian Point Trailhead. It was a smaller parking lot, but was pretty crowded. This hike was around 2 miles, and was very enjoyable. We went counterclockwise. It was a little muddy starting out, but wasn’t bad overall.

The views at what I assume were Indian Point were very nice.

Not a bad view!

And then the trail goes by a bunch of rock formations, some with crevices and cave-like features that likely more adventurous people than me crawl all over. We really enjoyed this hike, and also the solitude of it. It was easy to follow and was well marked, though I’d downloaded it on Alltrails as well.

After that, we knew there was more to do at the Garden of the Gods, but nothing that we really felt like we knew enough about. So, if you have been and have recommendations for next time, please tell me! It looked like there were some longer hikes, but all the All trails reviews mentioned horses and being poorly marked…and we just didn’t want to deal with it. So do the Observation Trail and the Indian Point Trail, and then drive to Rim Rock Trail, which is about 15 minutes away, and will be awesome…when they fix the stairs.

The stairs look amazing. And they were closed for repairs.

We enjoyed about a 1 mile hike around the Rim Rocks Trail, but couldn’t do what looked to be the highlight of the Trail, going down those stairs into the rock formations down below! I would highly recommend all three of these trails, and none of them were particularly difficult–the Indian Point Trail was rocky and you’ll want good shoes for all of them.

After that, we decided to visit the nearby towns. We started with Golconda, which was technically the mailing address of our retreat. It was a little tiny town on the Ohio River, with a history of being a place where the Trail of Tears went by. The Wikipedia page tells the story, of a ferry man who refused to help the Indians cross the river, and made them wait in a cave and many of them died there. The town itself was quite run down (though to be fair, so are parts of my city) but the river was nice: we drove up on the levee and went down as far as we could. Oh, I considered renting an airbnb on the levee here with a lovely porch to watch the river, but I’m glad I chose the one I did, with the jacuzzi, and being further from town. There wasn’t much to do there, though there was maybe one little restaurant.

We did stop by to look at the old lock and dam site.

We also visited two other nearby towns, named Rosiclaire and Elizabethtown. We had thought if we saw a fun looking restaurant we might have dinner in town, but didn’t see anything that appealed. (We also get a little uncomfortable with all the political signs in these areas, to be honest, and that makes me not want to spend any more money, as well as concerns over health safety.)

So, we headed back to be on barge watch! And by that I mean, more cheese and crackers, and the sun even came out for a bit.

There was no outside table so we had to improvise.

And then we cooked dinner and relaxed.

One interesting thing that happened in the early morning was that we heard a barge blowing its horn, over and over. I was tired and chilly and didn’t get out of bed, but I chatted with the neighbor later and she said it was a foghorn–that the fog covered the entire river and there were two barges passing one another blowing their foghorns at one another. I should have gotten up!

Anyway, we took our time getting going in the morning, but left around 11 am. On our way out we stopped by the outskirts of the Retreat center to do a short walk in the woods and visit a giant statue.

The walk took us to an old cemetery, a pet cemetery (it was sweet but if you read Stephen King you will get shivers reading that phrase) and what looked like it used to be a place with statues but was now just old wooden posts and cement block with broken bits. I think it was a place to visit the Stations of the Cross and I don’t know if it was taken away or vandalized, or what, but it wasn’t anything anymore. We did see a few deer as well.

The main building, which looked to be closed, perhaps abandoned?

I hope you get a chance to visit the Garden of the Gods sometime, or visit the Ohio River. We definitely enjoyed our stay and would go back again, especially to hike the Rim Rock Trail with the stairs fixed and maybe another longer trail in the Garden of the Gods area.

It was an easy drive home, less than 3 hours and the cats were happy to see us.

Travel

In Like a Lion, Out like a Lamb

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Question: are you familiar with the saying “March comes in like a lion, but out like a lamb?” Answer in the comments!

Okay, so things are busy here, as usual: gigs are heating back up, lots of Lent and Easter stuff happening, oddly a few new music concerts, and travel planning…because now we are going to NORWAY in late May/early June.

Louie is presenting at a conference, and we are taking advantage to visit Norway. I had actually been planning a different trip to New Mexico/Colorado, so I had to change gears, cancel some reservations, etc, and now I’m fully on board with our new planning. I was a little stressed at first, because I am not that great with change, but once I got my bearings, realized the planning is the same except it’s like, farther away, and started on my research…I’m so excited.

It is worth noting that is it much more expensive planning an international trip rather than a domestic trip with lots of camping. But luckily Louie’s work will reimburse parts of our trip (the conference lodgings, his plane ticket) and that does make it more reasonable.

Otherwise, I’ve been teaching, practicing, scheduling, looking forward to Spring Break. We are getting away for a weekend around Spring Break (unfortunately Spring Break, yes, always must be capitalized is actually two different weeks in our household, hence the weekend trip) to the Garden of the Gods area in Illinois. We’ve reserved an AirBnb overlooking the Ohio River and look forward to getting some hiking in, hopefully with good weather and not like, constant rain or something. Who knows!

So that’s where I’ve been. We’ve also been doing some nice stuff: Great Artists Series Concert, had a movie day where we watched TWO MOVIES in one day, hunkering down during an ice storm, enjoying 80 degree weather on the same day one week later, and more.

Image of roasted cherry tomatoes with cheese.

I heard about and then made the “famous” tiktok tomato feta pasta. Google it, make it, enjoy it.

Have you been to Norway? We are doing Bergen, Balestrand, and Oslo. Any suggestions are welcome!

Random thoughts

Super Tuesday

So many 2’s in today’s date, right?

Anyway, just a quick pop in to tell you how my week is going so far.

Honestly, last week was a really difficult week. My job was difficult, I was failing at everything, my students were doing poorly and it was all my fault, my class was the worse in the group rehearsals, mine had the worst posture, etc, etc. I had some days where I just broke down. I was tired and fantasized about quitting my early morning job at the end of the school year…or just never going back again even.

But I made it to the end of the week somehow, and had a nice weekend! And Monday was a holiday so I got tickets to a play on Sunday night.

I got the tickets from the St Louis Repertory Theater. I’d played a show with them a few years back, and we went to see A Christmas Carol in December, so when they sent an email offering a good deal on the latest play, I thought why not. I bought two tickets, had them held at Will Call since it was close to the date, and didn’t really pay attention beyond that.

We went to the theater at the appointed time and realized…oh so they don’t always have their shows at the same place. It was locked, no one was parking, nothing going on! I checked my email and realized, oh my gosh it’s at a different place about 14 minutes away.

Somehow we made it! We were a few minutes late, but it hadn’t started yet, and we got our tickets and got seated just in the nick of time!

The show was called Stick Fly and we really enjoyed it. It was both entertaining and thought provoking, which is the best way to be I think. I’m so glad we didn’t give up and go home, which is what we were very tempted to do after failing. The production runs through March 6 and I highly recommend it–just be sure to notice the address of the theater.

So I guess the morale is, keep on keeping on. It’ll get better. Or something.

And then this morning, I had my school job and it was fine, my students are doing a bit better, and I just need to keep at them and not let things slide, and then I went to Trader Joe’s. I got some orange sodas which I thought would be a nice weeknight treat.

As I was unloading I had the horrible thought that I had left them on the bottom of the cart. I didn’t see them anywhere, and I had almost done something like that in the past and thankfully somebody had noticed before I drove away. I thought, wow, this week is turning out just like last week, isn’t it.

But as I unpacked my bags I saw that the sodas were just in one of the bags. I hadn’t forgotten them at all!

I will take this as a sign that this week is going to be okay.

Random thoughts

midwest weather

Weather here is crazy. Warm, cold, ice, snow, warm, cold, etc. We had all the seasons from Wednesday to Friday of last week, according to one of my college students. I argued that we didn’t see summer (if we had there wouldn’t still be ice around). In any case, the weather keeps us on our toes, doesn’t it? Today is supposed to be warm by afternoon, but then snow is in the forecast again for later in the week.

We’ve had some fun activities this weekend–dinner at Louie’s mom’s on Friday night (a takeout beer dinner from the Whittemore House) and then we went to Jazz at the Bistro last night with our friends Ben and Roz. We had pizza with them beforehand, and then hung out again afterwards since the second Jazz show was sold out and we couldn’t stay. The show was great: Christian McBride on bass, Benny Green on piano, and Gregory Hutchinson on drums. I would have watched it again if it wasn’t sold out (if there are tickets available for the second show you can trade in for new seats, no additional charge.) Tonight we are going to see a play at the Rep called Stick Fly: they sent a code for discount tickets which were a really good deal and I didn’t want to pass it up. It’s nice getting out and about again.

I have tomorrow morning off from my school job due to President’s Day, but this week we have a big concert on Wednesday. The school is going “masks recommended” starting Tuesday rather than “masks required” so it’s a little stressful. No, there is no vaccine mandate for any employees or students or anyone. They do have protocols in place to put masks back in if the number of COVID cases gets above a certain percentage at any one school, but seeing as we teach students from 5 different schools at a 6th school, it doesn’t really make that much sense to me. The COVID cases are only known because of self-reporting, as well, so I suspect they are underreported. Oh well! We are told there are resources to help with our anxiety and that N95/KN95 masks protect the wearer…

You might ask, how do I feel comfortable going to shows and such but not being at work with unmasked people. The shows ask for vaccine proof or a negative test, and people are required to wear masks. The jazz shows do serve food and drink, but I can choose to keep my mask on, and they require masks and testing, which means that people have had to make extra effort to be there and aren’t likely to show up fully symptomatic, as they might be for school. Also, if I’m going to catch COVID, as I’ve said, I want it to be from something fun. We should be safe at our jobs, at our schools, etc.

I canned some pickled beets with beets from the CSA. I had to get a new canner to go with our induction stove, and the awesome thing is that it’s a steam canner, so it uses way less water.

The steam canner at work.

I’m doing a practice contest with my students starting on March 1. I’ve been working out the details all week, and I got it sent out (well, scheduled to send for tomorrow). I am hopeful it will encourage more practicing and be fun. In a nutshell, the students track their practicing until the end of the semester, and the top three practicers win automatic prizes. In addition, each student gets a “raffle ticket” for each 15 minutes they practice, and then I’ll do a drawing and pick three more winners. I don’t have the prizes yet but am planning on $10 gift certificates to a variety of places, some ice cream places, maybe target, that sort of thing. I think it will be really interesting to see how it goes and to see how much some students practice. It’s a good incentive as we head into contest/recital season. I’ve got several students doing Solo and Ensemble, and 12 students doing the NFMC Festival, and then probably a bunch playing on the recital at the end of April.

I’ve also been trying to get ahead on my summer planning, and setting up stuff for the summer/fall. This month doesn’t seem as busy as March/April look to be so I wanted to use my time to make plans for the future. I’m working out how I want the summer to look and how to streamline my teaching schedule so I’m teaching less time when I’m teaching less students. I think it’ll be the best summer yet as far as those things go.

How is your February going? Did you witness the ridiculous women’s figure skating final night of crying?

Random thoughts

Happy VDay

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It’s been a busy weekend!

I mean, not by pre-pandemic standards. But by my new “weekends” free standards: I had a gig last night AND this afternoon.

I played with a small group at a retirement community (The Gatesworth) last night. After that Louis heated up our Valentine’s Day Dinner: it was a meal from the faculty club at Wash U, the Whittemore House. We joined the club sometime in the past year, and they’ve been doing various takeout events, where you pick up food and drinks (sometimes) and then go home and you can heat it up to eat later. The previous owner of Stellina is the chef at the Whittemore house, so the food is tasty. We had agnolotti, short ribs and root veggies, and then chocolate cake for dessert.

I had a wedding this afternoon, which was perfectly nice. I feel tired…I’ve been pretty tired this whole spring semester so far, and I suppose it’s from getting up early, working too hard, all of that. I am not quite sure what to do about it, other than trying to get to bed early. I think I am more burnt out than anything…I’m not sure if I should resign from my early morning job at the end of the school year because it’s been so exhausting doing that and teaching, or if the exhaustion is unrelated and it’s simply…exhaustion from the pandemic, the worries, the stress, all of that. I find myself unable to simply live and forget what is going out around us.

I’ve been enjoying watching the figure skating, of course, though I’m pretty upset about the fact that one of the Russian skaters was caught doping and yet is continuing to be allowed to compete, and in fact, why was competing in the first place when she had failed the drug test over a month ago? I get so angry how there are people who just keep breaking the rules and other people who never get to break even one rule without getting extremely severe consequences (thinking of the track and field athlete in the summer who got disqualified for smoking weed).

I feel like my life is just one week after another, counting down the days until? I think the winter weather is getting to me, and spending too many weekends at home without social interaction. Too much of my social life was tied up with working on the weekends, I guess. But I’m also not super comfortable with groups of people, and I’m not convinced the pandemic is quite over yet, and I still don’t want to get COVID, so I don’t know quite what to do.

This is just me with a bit of the Sunday blues, I suppose. I guess I’ll fold some laundry and read for a bit more, or something. There’s no shortage of books to read, that’s for sure!

Books, Hiking

Snowstorm

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We had a nice ice/snowstorm last week. It started Tuesday night late with ice, then a bit of snow, then a break, and then it starting snowing early Thursday and snowed practically all day. I had off school for my early morning job, and then taught online Wednesday and Thursday. Friday I did go into the college to teach, though I borrowed Louie’s Subaru rather than drive a Corolla.

It was beautiful to watch, and I’m glad we got the snow, but I’ll be glad to see it gone. Today the high is in the 40’s so I’m hoping it makes things easier to get around in and that I can start driving my own car again without concerns.

This weekend has been mostly at home relaxing, but we’ve done some interesting things over the past few weeks. One day we hiked the Lewis and Clark trail–it was after a snow, and there were some icy bits but mostly it was a wonderful day of hiking, and the weather was perfect: sunny and in the 40’s. It’s nice hiking in St Louis in the winter when it’s warm enough, because there are no bugs, and if it’s a scenic hike you get more views.

Quite a lot of the hike was along the Missouri River. It had a lot of ice floes traveling along it.
The hike was about 8.5 miles. This was the map from Louie’s watch. You can make it a 5 miles hike, or shorter if you just do the out and back to the first river overlook (which is very nice) but I have to say, the whole hike is really nice! It isn’t terribly steep overall, and so much of it is along the river that it might be the most scenic hike in the St Louis area.

We also walked around Forest Park a few times and enjoyed the scenery there.

We often park near the World’s Fair Pavilion to start any walks in Forest Park. This was on a cold day after a bit of snow.

We haven’t been out much otherwise, lately. It’s cold and you know, omicron. We’ve eaten out a few times though, at Lily’s Mexican and a place near our house. And last night we got takeout from Himalayan Yeti, which we had almost forgotten about! There are some leftovers for lunch as well.

Cooking wise I’ve made a few delicious soups lately. I might have already told you about the Broccoli Cheddar soup, but I’m not sure. That one we ate with leftover rolls from Union Loafers: I had bought some things from them for Christmas, but froze the dinner rolls as we couldn’t eat it all at the time. I wish they sold them year round.

I also made the potato mushroom soup linked here. I made a few substitutions based on what I had, but I chose it because I had mushrooms and potatoes to use up and we wanted a soup. Highly recommend.

TV wise we’ve been watching 1883 and Euphoria as they come out, we just finished the latest season (or half season?) of Ozark. Last night we watched figure skating and other things on the Olympics.

Books: Non fiction I’m reading a book on the Marquis de Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan and They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie Jones-Rogers. I am slowly working through my nonfiction book stacks.

I also read Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang which was a memoir showing a family of Chinese immigrants and their great difficulties living in NYC. Very thought provoking and well written.

Fiction wise: I recently read Mrs. Dalloway for my book club.

Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis, a cute romance

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang. I would have liked this book better if the main character hadn’t been a violinist as I found most of the violin parts to be pretty bad (poorly researched), but the rest of the book to be wonderful.

It’s another week ahead of me, and it looks to be a “normal” week, weather reports look fine, it should be back to work, teaching, getting the spring festival application done, and a few other things. I slept poorly last night worrying about stupid things, and had some weird dreams of trying to get to various gigs in Ohio, but otherwise, no complaints! We are preparing for a performance in late February at the school, which gives us a good direction for the next few weeks of classes.

What have you been up to? Read any good books lately? Goodness knows I don’t actually need any more on my lists, but I’m always up for me.