I am an Awesome Adventurer

On Monday, Vicky and I took our adventure feet to Swope Park for a poorly-signposted forest adventure.

To the Hollow Fox trail! Oh, Fox Hollow? I guess that's cool too.

Sure, we'll just go... this way?

Obligatory hero pose.

After our adventure, we decided we'd earned milkshakes and grilled cheese sandwiches at the very hippy fluffy Cafe Gratitude, where you order mainly by adjectives. We were both excited, not to mention cool and eternally youthful.

Do you have an "I am an awesome adventurer?"

And we had a whole different kind of adventure that evening, because Monday night is karaoke night! I had previously only sung The Time Warp during Welcome Week with the people who turned out to be my friends, so actually singing karaoke by myself (or more or less - I nagged Vicky and looked tragic until she agreed to do one song with me first) put my adventure skills to the test. But, aided by Vicky and singable cheesy '80s songs, and possibly a little by cake-flavoured vodka*, I made it through my first real karaoke night. I always knew learning Girls Just Wanna Have Fun would be useful one day.

Girls had fun.

The next morning, I deviated from my policy of doing only free things so as to have more money for milkshakes, and I'm very glad I did, because the Liberty Memorial and the attached World War I museum were excellent. They made me want to learn more about history (and relearn the things I've forgotten since high school).

Ah, propaganda.

We went up to the top of the monument, where it was windy and we talked to a baby. These points are unrelated. We weren't talking to it as it sailed past, or anything.

Then, because we know what's important in life, MORE MILKSHAKES. Which we drank before our food arrived, so neither of us could finish our lunch. What would our parents say?

On the way home, Vicky took me urban exploring, and we went to the Castle, not actually a castle, but a building from a time when people sometimes liked things to look like castles. Now it's run down and fabulously creepy, and although I was worried we'd step on needles and die, we didn't. Which was nice.

Also, there was magic for sale. But I'm moving and shouldn't be buying heavy things.

We stopped at a mysterious 'natural foods' store to see if they'd have vegan sandwiches I could take on the train, but instead they had ear candles and Bible Bars.

I did not buy either of those things.

"Excuse me, is this suitable for heathens?"

All adventured out, we had a quiet evening of truly terrible old horror movies ("so is he the vampire?"), edamame beans, and following the presidential debate on Twitter, which I suspect was much more fun and much better for the blood pressure than actually watching it.

And then, because I make travel plans for stupid times of day, we got up at 5 to go to the train station, which was beautiful and very old and deeply, deeply creepy first thing in the morning. In all seriousness, they were playing spooky, echoey jazz. It's like they were doing it on purpose.

Nothing creepy here. Just us ghosts.

But I made it through the gauntlet of station ghosts and onto the train to Chicago, where adventures untold awaited me.

(Untold because I haven't written them up yet. But then they'll be told.)

*THIS IS A THING WHICH EXISTS.