I strayed from my Metamoran roots tonight (yes, I’m writing this post ahead of schedule–go me!) and hit up the Washington Cherry Festival. It’s a four day festival/fair that takes over the back lots of a few old car dealerships and a Walmart backyard. It’s pretty much your standard small town fair. I met up with two of my coworkers/friends along with my coworkers husband and brother…but yea, I’d call those guys friends too ;). So anyway, we decided it would make sense for us to meet up for dinner and a few drinks at the beer tent.

Luckily we made it to the Festival just in time for the Kidz Got Talent show! After watching that for about 2.5 seconds we decided it was important for us to take a lap around the fair before we snag some food and hit the beer tent. We passed up the tempting choices of Qdoba and corndogs…

Lindsey and I settled on Cherry Tacos–I mean, that only makes sense. My taco consisted of beef brisket, peppers, onions, cheese and some cherry sauce (that you can see I squirted on my taco.) The girl who took my order clearly thought I was insane.

Allison opted for the “Walking Taco” (chili in a Fritos bag topped with cheese and sour cream) and I was obviously really pumped about trying my cherry taco. (Why does Washington love taco’s so much?) We took our treats to the beer tent so we could sit in the shade and enjoy our “meal” while we cooled off with a brew.

Yikes! The beer tent was looking a little sparse! I guess we were there a little too early for the party-ers…but who cares? We were there to eat! I can’t lie–I was really scared/nervous about eating beef brisket rolled in a tortilla with cherry sauce on top. But Linds and I dug in..what follows is a play-by-play of us trying our first bite:

 

We were unsure at first–but turns out WE LOVED IT! I never though I’d like a spicy cherry sauce on my beef brisket taco–but I did! We weren’t done with our tacos–we needed dessert. So we ventured back out to the festival and found a gem of a food stand.

Not only did this place have a sweet condiment station:

Seriously? “Squeez, Pleez our Catsup Cow”??? WHAT?? And if that didn’t grab your business, this would:

DUH! Linds and I were SOLD! A Jesus cross funnel cake was our next purchase.

It was a smidge contradictory considering we ate our cross while downing another beer. Either way, that funnel cake was awesome!! It hit the spot.

Now we were ready to explore the fair…and I can’t lie, it was pretty much like every other fair/festival.

One thing I’ve never seen at a festival–hand sanitizing stations:

Obviously we partook!

That was the last stop at the Cherry Festival. It was time for us to move on. It was so hot out..we had our fill of carnival food and a mass of people. I’m so glad that I finally “popped” my Washington Cherry. More festivals and county fairs are in my future and I cannot wait!! Get set for tomorrow.

Good night, Central Illinois.

TP

PSSSTT!! Want a budget breakdown?

Cherry Taco: $5

Fries w/salt and vinegar: $5

Cross funnel cake: $5

4 tickets for 2 beers: $4

Total: $19

Seems a little pricey–but I like to support the local communities, so I’m OK with it.

Yesterday I had intentions of hitting up this really cute old school drive-in for lunch, but since I live in a city with bi-polar weather and it downpours periodically, I had to take my lunch plans in doors (I fully intend to go to the drive-in at some point this summer). Two of my coworkers and I grabbed lunch and a little treat at The Spotted Cow in Peoria.

See? It was so rainy that you couldn’t see the Spotted Cow sign from our car.

There! Much better.

Anyway, Rose, Emily and I took about a 10 minute drive from our office to the one and only Spotted Cow.  Originally the Spotted Cow was just an awesome ice cream shop, it is now a full service restaurant.  The menu has everything from burgers to Italian beef to chicken salad. You place your order at the counter and wait for your food at one of the many black and white tables scattered throughout. The decor is all out cows–that makes sense though, right? And since cows are a personal favorite animal of mine, I felt right at home.

Did you notice the totally rad cows all over the place? Emily even landed us a historic table:

OMG!! I ate a hot dog at the same place Vice President Joe Biden ate ice cream last year!! (Who knew Peoria and the Spotted Cow were so historical?!)  For lunch, Emily and I ordered chili cheese dogs with fries and a root beer (apparently Emily and I only eat the same things) and Rose got the “Blu  Burger.”  While Emily and I agreed that our lunch was thebomb.com, Rose wasn’t in love with her burger.

All was not lost though.  I mean, we were at an ice creamery and it was time for dessert.  This is another one of those times in which I was way more excited about eating dessert than I was about eating my lunch. I ordered one scoop of my favorite go-to-and-not-too-exciting ice cream Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough in a sugar cone, Emily got a scoop of “Peach Moo-Berry” frozen yogurt in a cup and Rose got a scoop of the “Holstein Delight” (which is basically a mixed bag of a bunch of flavors all rolled up into one..it sounded gross to me, but Rose loved it!!) in a cup. The Spotted Cow’s ice cream menu has classic flavors like mint chocolate chip as well as the no-longer-available-but-hilarious Aaron Schock-o-latte.

Aren’t my tiny little sausage fingers so funny-looking?

After we finished off our treats, it was time for us to head back to the office–our tummies full and sugar flowing through our veins.

The ice cream was the highlight of our trip to the Spotted Cow…while they have a full lunch and dinner menu, ice cream is definitely their strong suit.

I’m looking forward to what’s on the agenda for tonight–come back tomorrow to find out what I did!

TP

Psst!! Here’s a cost break down from the Spotted Cow:

Chili cheese dog w/fries and a soda: $6.05

1 Scoop of ice cream in a sugar cone: $2.90

Total: $8.95

I decided to kick off my summer Central Illinois tour with a bang (and by bang I mean a bruised rear, skinned up knee and closed ice cream shack) by taking a leisurely bike ride down the Rock Island Trail (RIT) starting in Alta with a mid-trailblazing break at Jane’s Icebox in Dunlap (approximately 8.8 miles total).

To give you some brief background info on the RIT, it’s about a 26 mile trail that stretches between Alta and Toulon, Illinois. It’s pretty much a dirt/gravel path that was at one time a railway (circa 1870-ish to 1950-ish) and now converted into bike/running/skiing trails.

This gives you a pretty good idea–we barely scratched the trails surface! But anyway, I had 2 friends join me and we packed up our bikes and headed to the trail. I knew my purchase of an SUV would come in handy at some point.

We even ran into a real live trailblazing girl who graciously snapped a pre-biking photo for us!

Don’t we look awesome?? I have to admit that I was more interested in going to Jane’s Icebox than I was the biking part..but it was my motivation!

OMG! I made it to mile 4 and I’m SO CLOSE to Jane’s I can hardly stand it!

…oh wait. Jane’s is CLOSED on Wednesday’s at 4pm. (So much for my “preplanning”) OK–think fast, where else can I get a sweet treat because I’m DYING here!? (this is what I was thinking in my head) I guess we’ll follow these random signs that say “JOE” on them to see where they take us. (See that little white J with the red dot and the arrow in the bottom right hand corner of the picture?) I mean, really, this “JOE” person could be some weird sick freak and TP the Town could be over faster than you can say “Dunlap Chainsaw Massacre.” I let my strange mind get the best of me because “JOE” turned out to be a darling coffee shop, Not Your Average Joe.

See? There’s nothing to be scared of. Emily and I ordered strawberry banana smoothies and Megan got an Italian soda to help us cool off. The adorable guy at the counter helped us pick out our sweet treats and told us that each drink was made with love (swoon!). We sat outside to enjoy the gorgeous evening and our beverages.

Then it was time for us to head back.

But of course I had to show off my awesome skills–I can ride my bike with no handlebars!

Our “adventure” on the Rock Island Trail wouldn’t be complete without a scraped knee and bruised kidney. Megan took one for the team when she lost balance biking across the bridge.. But she manned up and biked the nearly 4 miles back to our car. What a champ! I’m certainly feeling it today–I’m not sure if it’s from being extremely out of shape or my shotty rock hard bike seat–either way, it’s not easy to sit down.

This was a great experience for my first real adventure post. I learned that I need to be flexible and probably do some more research!! Head to the Links page for additional info on the Rock Island Trail and Not Your Average Joe’s coffee shop. I’m trying to decide if I should give you a break down of time and costs–if you have a strong opinion either way, leave a comment!

Check back tomorrow to see what I did this afternoon! See you later, Central Illinois!

TP

It’s here! June 1 is finally here. Today is the day I go on my first adventure for TP the Town!!

It’s taken a bit of planning and coordination to pull my summer calendar together…And I’m not even done planning for the month of June. But since this idea was conceived back in April, I’ve been doing some preliminary planning. I’ve been snagging my parents copy of the Peoria Journal Star to check out their events calendar, surfing (do people still use that word to describe “browsing” the interwebs?) local website to gather more info and asking around for ideas of things to do around Central Illinois. This was all compiled in a note on my iPhone until it was finally time to put together a calendar and decide what activity I’m going to do each day.

This was a messy task–the little boxes on my Microsoft Publisher calendar couldn’t hold all of the information (especially on Wednesdays, that seems to be a popular night of the week.)

See what I mean about Wednesdays? What is that about?

Anyway, once I had a pretty good start on what the month of June would look like for TP the Town, I bit the bullet and bought a URL using WordPress! I mean, I wanted this endeavor to be legit! Currently I’m waiting on my dear pal, Derek, over at Gainlight Studios to hook me up with a logo graphic to spice up the look of my site.

And once that is finished, you can expect to see some sweet TP the Town stickers to help promote the site! Until then you will have to deal with my no-so-fancy WordPress “theme.”  I’ll do my best to learn HTML and CSS to make this look prettier–or recruit some free labor to help give my site more of a design. Or if YOU want to help, post a comment!

Well I guess it’s about that time for me to go on my first adventure. You can expect to hear about it at some point tomorrow–extra points if I post before noon! See you later, Peoria.

TP