Road Trip 2014 - Walking around Riverside

June 22 & 26, 2014

Andrew and Henriët live in a beautiful area. Many of he houses are 60 or more years old and are nothing like the cookie cutter subdivisions we are used to in Portland. In between our times googling over Jurgen, Carla and I have gone out on some walks.

Mushrooms cropping up among the meticulously manicured lawns

Whimsical details in a lawn.

About 20 minutes away from Andrew and Henriët's house is a pedestrian suspension bridge; we walked across it to get into another cute little neighborhood. We saw a group of kids on bikes roll across the bridge and head down to the bank where they were building a fort and generally doing kid things.

Entrance to the suspension bridge

Shadows from the bridge.

The Des Plaines river is a quick moving, wide body of water; not as wide as the Williamette back home in Portland, but plenty wide.

On another walk we headed into Riverside which is a very well-to-section of town with plenty of parks and wild spaces along the river. Carla and Jeanette saw a beaver swimming by earlier in the week

Flower/weed near the Des Plaines river.

You can't see the depth of the lot here; there is statuary in the back. Carla and Jeanette saw 11 gardeners on the grounds the day before

Cottages are also in the mix.

I like the flat stone steps entrance to this house

We enjoyed some of the details of the houses.

Entrance to a Frank Lloyd Wright home

 Nancy and Tom Lea have some shallow planters full of succulents which we liked back in Boise. We saw some more on our walk in Riverside. I think this will be one of the first things Carla will do when we get home.

Planters frame an entrance.

It's beautiful here in the summer; and it hasn't been crazy hot every day. Today was in the mid 70s. But when it rains, it pours like I've never seen before. I imagine we'll be coming back this winter so we can get another view - though we may not be able to get outside much because of the crazy cold.