City Survival Guide Lesson #1: Leave the City!

I love Chicago.

I wouldn't have said that four years ago.  Heck, I wouldn't have said that even one year ago.  But now, it's so much a part of who I am, of my calling for this season of my life, that I can't help but love it.  Still, it has a way of grating on my sanity.  Don't get me wrong; I'm very thankful for a functioning Fire Department.  I could just do without a reminder of it's well-being every five minutes... at least once in a while.

City life has a way of energizing and then zapping that energy on a cyclical basis, with occasional irreversible meltdowns.  To prevent such meltdowns, we've found that after three months of downtown living, we need at least two days elsewhere.  Until Thursday, it'd been almost exactly three months since we'd been out of Chicago for anything.  It was time.  We recalled a quaint, quiet, touristy-but-not-too-touristy town we visited in Michigan last year called South Haven.  So Thursday, E and I got away from the hustle and bustle to soak in some much needed peace and quiet, which for us included (but was never limited to):

Strolling Around "Downtown" with the Locals

Antiquing

(Yes, it's a word!)

Apple Orchard-ing
(not so much a word, but eh.)

Joining in on a High School Homecoming Parade, Incognito

Black Squirrel Foraging

And Sunset Enjoying

going...

going...

gone!

Good Night, Sun.

Good Night, South Haven.

See you tomorrow, Chicago, with more love in my heart for you now that I've enjoyed a little time away.  Don't take it personally, my friend...  I had to go away in order to come back excited to see you once more.  As G.K. Chesterton once remarked in "The Riddle of the Ivy" (found in his book Tremendous Trifles),

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; 

it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."