The Allerton Park

I haven't been seeing aspects of my spontaneous self for quite sometime. Very recently I've seen some sparkles of it and I'm so damn happy that it's not dead, the spontaneous self I mean. I was going to accompany my friend, who was visiting from Iran, to Chicago. A few days before he arrived here he said something in his text messages that implied he has been assuming that I will go to Milwaukee with him and I thought well, we'll see and I ended up going to Milwaukee with him and we stayed with a mutual friend and it was hysterically fun. Thankfully I didn't hesitate to go. Also a few days before going to Milwaukee this other friend of mine called saying a few friends have rented a cabin in the woods near Asheville and it will be cool if I could join them. He generously invited me to go to his place in Atlanta, spend a day or two with him and another mutual friend and then we drive to Asheville and join the other two friends with whom we were planning to stay in the cabin?! What did I do!? Got a plane ticket from Milwaukee to Atlanta that very night, a few hours after my friend's call! 

Today?! I was sitting in my office not doing shit and it was too cloudy and depressing; I was down and all of a sudden I decided it's such a shame that I've never been to Allerton Park in nearly four years that I've lived in this town. Fortunately I had a friend's car borrowed for today and I simply drove to Allerton. The best thing I have done in quite a while. Isn't it pretty?!  The interesting thing was that once I got to the park it stopped raining and it got quite sunny and beautiful as you can say from these two photos:

And below is the same scene but this time from the top of the white folly in the Fu Dog Garden. 

Look at the photos in this blog post so you will get a better feeling what a heaven I've been to today. I would recommend reading the post as well; she has written pretty well about the park and Robert Allerton. The white folly I talked about earlier is captured in the first photo of the post. 

On my way back I was so charged that once I got to Champaign I realized I had driven 28 miles in 17 minutes! 

I just learned today that Robert Allerton has donated a substantial number of artifacts to The Art Institute of Chicago. Such a shame I didn't know this person before.