Weekly Round up 2 of 3: You Can't Go Home Again

 

It's that time again!  If you're new here, my sitch is that once a month my husband and stepsons go to Boy Scout camp.  I used to stay at home on these weekends and do nothing, and now I get out of town myself and go on a little adventure.

I'll be the first to admit that my trip ideas are a little random but this time I really outdid myself.  Last time I left you with the hint "I get no kick" and if you completed the sentence as "I get no kick from champagne" and know your midwest college towns, then you know that the answer is the one and only Champaign Illinois.  If you're not familiar, Champaign is about 100 miles south of Chicago and along with its twin city of Urbana ("Chambana") is the home of the University of Illinois. 

 

It's a place that I used to call home.

The Idea

Champaign was home from 1978 to 1991 (ages 3 to 16).  For many years I've toyed with the idea of going back there.  Yes it's a haul but it's not really any further away than Chicago and I've been there for weekend trips.  It would be nice to see the house where I grew up and do all of the things that I used to do.  Specifically:

• Walk past our old house
• Drive by my old schools
  
• Go to the Champaign library
• Go to the Urbana library
• Go to that random park out in the country that had the statue
  
• Have breakfast at the White Horse Inn
• Get pizza from Papa Del's
• Get a croissant from the Art Mart
  

You can see the problem: the trip is 100% based on memories of my childhood.  I don't really have anything to "do" there.  Champaign was just a place where my family lived, we're not from there and we don't have any roots there.  That's a lot of driving to go to a library and eat a croissant.   Plus there was the "you can't go home again" factor - what were the odds that the Champaign of my memory would be the Champaign of today?

And now for something completely different, as you know my current drug of choice is visiting Frank Lloyd Wright houses.  I've been working off this list, and the breakdown is:

• Places way far away that I just don't have a reason or desire to travel to right now (example: California).
• Places within reasonable driving distance, which I've put a decent dent into.
• Wisconsin and Chicago - there's a large concentration up there, but it's a bit far so I can't get to those right now.  If my craze continues then I might make a once a year FLW bender trip to start knocking those back, but my travel dance card is full right now.
• The "does not fit into any of the above categories" houses.  That list includes Lafayette IN and Springfield IL.  Both are too far off the beaten path to fold into a CHI trip.

Oh...you know what's right on the beaten path between Lafayette and Springfield?  And if I'm going there anyway might as well stop by Kankakee on the way home.  These three houses are all between 60-90 minutes of the fair city of Champaign.

Once I added FLW to the mix, Champaign made total sense as a destination.  I could hardly believe it.

(P.S. I won't talk very much about the FLW visits in this post...they get their own post tomorrow)

The Plan

Thursday night: drive to Lafayette

Friday: take the earliest tour of the Lafayette house, then drive to Champaign.  Kick around.

Saturday: have a lazy morning in Champaign, drive to the Springfield house in the afternoon, go back to Champaign.

Sunday: head up to Kankakee for the final house tour, go home.

As I got further into planning, I realized that it made more sense to break up the drive to Lafayette into two parts to minimize nighttime driving.

The Complication

On Wednesday, the Springfield house sent out an email saying that all Saturday tours were cancelled due to a staffing shortage.  I was bummed, because out of the three houses it was the one that I wanted to see the most, and also the one that is furthest from home, so the odds were high that if I couldn't do it on this trip I never would.  Luckily they were doing tours on Friday and Sunday, so I was able to rebook for Friday afternoon.   That meant a busy Friday and then a totally free Saturday to see the sights of Champaign.

Then the other shoe dropped.  A work project that was supposed to wrap up before I left was dragging, and it was clear that I was going to need work on Friday.  I wasn't sure how that was going to fit in to a busy day.  I grudgingly packed my work laptop.

Wheels Up

On Thursday afternoon I hit the road.  I arrived in Somewhere Indiana and checked into a dreary chain hotel (cost: $40 after points).  So far this trip was exactly like every business trip that I made in my 20's...get to my destination in the dark and check into a hotel that's like every other hotel.  It was a bit depressing.

I woke up very early on Friday and took care of the work that had come in so far.  I did a search for wifi spots in Lafayette and found that the entire downtown and parks have free city wifi.  It made sense to go to Lafayette way earlier than I needed to and get out of the depressing hotel.  I sent reminders to everyone that I still needed info from and hit the road.

I wheeled into Lafayette and hit the park which was much better scenery than the hotel.  The biggest piece of work that I needed had come in, so I was able to check that off the list.  Phew!  I sent more nags, shut down my laptop, and went into vacation mode.  I set off to get my first FLW hit of the trip.

After the tour was over, the rest of the info that I needed for work crawled into my inbox so I returned to the park and knocked it out. 

Now it was lunchtime and I knew exactly where I was headed.  When I was looking into Champaign restaurants, I turned up La Bamba ("burritos as big as your head") which I vaguely remembered.  Imagine my surprise that they were also in Lafayette and Springfield so I had my choice of locations.  Also their menu includes "normal portion size" burritos so I was able to get a taste of the old days without having to commit to an enormous meal.

Now it was time to get back on the road for the three hour drive to Springfield.  The time flew and I arrived at my destination.  I got there a bit early but I didn't have a good plan of what to do, so I ended up walking around the neighborhood and killing time in the gift shop.  I did the tour and then was wheels up again for my final destination.

Life in Champaign

I stayed in an Airbnb that was very close to our old house.  I took a long walk the first night all around the old hood.  It was 100% identical to my memories.

My biggest memory of my childhood is walking EVERYWHERE as though cars hadn't been invented yet.  My other memory was that everything was "one mile" away.  Sure enough my memory was correct!  A lot of the places that I associated with my childhood really were one mile away.  The other thing is that a Champaign mile felt much shorter than an "anywhere else" mile.  Maybe because I was a lot smaller when I first started walking these streets?  Or because it's so flat and the scenery is so pleasant?  It really was easier to walk than to drive.

I'm not kidding that my agenda for the morning was to go to my old schools and the libraries.  The Champaign library has had a major upgrade (it's TWO STORIES now people).  Later that morning I got in the car and racked up a whopping 15 MILES driving all over town.  The Urbana library is comfortingly exactly the same as it was back in my day. 

The lowlight of the visit was driving around the U of I campus.  Champaign isn't a large town, but I feel like that's where 99.9% of the population was.  It was very crowded.

In the afternoon I made tracks for "the random park out in the country with the statue".  My memory is that sometime toward the end of our Champaign residency my parents and I went out to a park in a country for a picnic.  There was a really cool statue there.  It was far, far away and I remember that it was called Monticello Park.

Google wasn't turning up a Monticello Park.  Of course I could have asked my parents, but what's the fun in that.  A list of top 10 Champaign attractions said Allerton Park, which is in Monticello IL, 20 minutes away from Champaign.  It wasn't ringing a bell but I saw a picture that I thought might be my statue and so I went to check it out.

So what about my "far, far away" memory?  20 minutes is a very short distance where I live but a loooooong ways away by Champaign standards.  I went out into the country, turned into the park and YES THERE WAS THE STATUE!!!  But there was no place to park so I continued down the road...wow it was a really long road.  I finally found the visitors parking lot and got out of the car...oh.  Allerton Park is not a "one statue" kind of a place. 

Ya gotta love it when early 20th century millionaires build massive estates out in the country with miles and miles of sculpture gardens and then leave their estates to the nearest university to open up to the public.  And then some kid who gets taken there many times condenses the memory into one visit and one statue.

 How had I forgotten about the goldfish maze?

Hey goldfish!

Or the Fu garden?

The gazebo at the end is the "statue" that I remembered.  There was a huge group of people taking pictures and I wanted to stay out of their way so when all was said and done I never really did get to see it close up.  Allerton Park is huge and I was there walking around and gawking for about two hours, so I was out of steam by the time I got back to it.  But don't feel bad for me, since I came for one statue and got miles and miles of sculpture gardens instead.

This is a fu dog, which will either horrify you or bring back oddly comforting memories of your childhood.

Champaign Eats

From my "to-do" list.

• Have breakfast at the White Horse Inn
• Get pizza from Papa Del's
• Get a croissant from the Art Mart

I've had the experience before of having a great food experience and then returning years later to have a so-so food experience.  I was prepared for the Champaign food experience to fall flat.

Right off the bat, the White Horse Inn was a bust.  It closed some time ago.  I drove by the building but saw nothing that looked familiar.

You've heard me trash talk Papa John's pizza in this space many times.  That's because my "pizza papa" is Papa Del's.  Our standard order was a thin crust with sausage and mushrooms.

A few years ago when I was daydreaming about Champaign, I checked to see if they were still in business.  Not only were they alive and kicking, but they had expanded their delivery area to the entire country.  For a mere $80 you can have their pizza shipped on dry ice for you to bake at home (it's not $80 per pizza, that's the minimum charge for the packaging and one pizza, so ordering multiple pizzas is much more cost effective).  I had mixed emotions.  On the one hand it tickled me to know that there was nationwide demand for my childhood pizza joint.  On the other hand...$80 pizza?  Eh, on the other hand $80 is cheaper than a trip to Champaign.  Eh, on the other hand there's a pizza shop on every corner.

On Friday night around 6:30 I called in my order.  They said it would be a two hour wait.  Uh...no.

On Saturday I tried again and called at 5.  The call went straight to hold.  I decided that I would hold for 5 minutes tops and if no one picked up then I would abandon my pizza dreams.  Two minutes later a real live human took my order and the wait time was only one hour.  Score!

I got my pizza and a salad and drove the mile back to the Airbnb.

Oh gawd it was everything.  Exactly like I remembered except a thousand times better.  After a few slices I tackled the salad.  I was expecting the standard pizza shop limpness, but it was crisp and fresh and the ranch dressing was to die for.  I had craftily brought ziplock bags with me so that I had an easy way to bring the leftovers home in the cooler.

On Sunday morning my last stop was The Art Mart, which I remember as the Home of The Epic Chocolate Croissants.  The thing is that I wasn't particularly hungry at the time and in the end I decided to leave the croissants for my next visit if there ever is one.  But if you're in the area it's a very cool cafe/store.

I pulled out of the parking lot, drove past my childhood house one last time, and hit the road for Kankakee.

Let's Wrap It Up

"You can't go home again"...unless your home is Champaign.  By far the best part of the trip was seeing so many familiar sights that were largely unchanged from my childhood.  The second best part was unlocking my missing memory of Allerton Park.

There's a lot more to Champaign than sculpture gardens and pizza, but that was what I had time for.

Would I recommend dropping everything and going to Champaign?  If it's not nearby and you didn't grow up there, maybe not so much.  If it's in your neck of the woods, then yes.  If you need a place to hang your hat while you're on a midwest FLW bender, then it's also a yes. 

Anyone else out there with no ties to their hometown?  Ever been back for a visit?  Who's been to Champaign?

See you tomorrow to talk FLW.