Several times before she got here, Mica said to me, “I hope we get to see Peoples when we visit!”
No Peoples sightings. The coyotes stopped yowling when she came in to my room to hear them. The bison weren’t out (they live on another street). The ducks didn’t visit until Monday morning (probably because our pond is so scummy right now – we’re about to start working on that), and didn’t stay long when they did.
Sigh. We just had birds, squirrels, chipmunks and frogs (and horses, but not on our property, ha).
Nature was mocking me!
Then, of course, this guy shows up Monday night, after she left:
And another one visited our bedroom balcony in the middle of the night! I’m not sure if either was Peoples, though. The one in the photo has different markings, and looks slimmer. I wish he would have visited when she was here!
Luckily, the animal portion of the trip was the only bust. Well, that and me thinking their train to the city came later, and getting them there with a minute to spare but not being able to get on the train because the train came early and blocked the track crossing. I felt like such an arsehole (and they were completely cool about it). Moving on.
Mica and Harrison are in Chicago for a long visit and spent Saturday night through Monday afternoon with us. I know Mica through blogging, and Steven and I spent time with her and Harrison in 2013 and hit it off. And we hadn’t seen them since then (but Mica and I text most days)! I was greatly looking forward to chilling and catching up, but also, showing them some of the stuff around our house.
Like… the Pyramid House!
I totally forgot about this place until I drove by it on moving day with my Mom in February. And I showed it to my snister when she visited in April. When I emailed Mica and asked if we should check it out she responded enthusiastically “OMG YESSSSSSSSS.”
(I love Mica’s enthusiasm for things. She’s a lot of fun to be around.)
So basically, this family was interested in pyramids, and the dad was always building small ones around the house (to test their powers…). When it became time to build a new house in the late 70s, they decided to build it on the land he had for his construction business, in the shape of a pyramid. They didn’t intend for it to be more than their home, but people were so interested in it, they opened it to the public in the 80s and have been giving tours to some extent since then.
The house itself is very dated (and a bit tacky with the combined Egyptian/country/floral themes).
The most interesting part is the exterior – they’ve gone through many different surface materials and different methods to try to make the house appear to be gold. And they’ve had many issues – with the quality of the materials, the materials’ reaction to snow and ice, and with people complaining about them (being too shiny).
They also had an interesting response from the county after building this fifty five foot Ramses II statue… they were a bit over the county height limitation. It’s actually been raised to sixty feet since it was built so they’re okay now. (I only know the county height limit because we had to research it when we thought we needed to built a wireless tower on our property – at ninety feet.)
The father who started the pyramid interest is no longer alive, but the mom still lives there, and the youngest son gives tours. The tour is a bit of a sales pitch – for their mineral water they have on site, their beer made with the mineral water, trips to Egypt, and their conference/reception area. Ha ha. And don’t forget their HUGE gift shop.
But the tour was interesting. In a nosy, peering in to other people’s lives sort of way. I like that it’s unique, and that it makes them happy. And it sounds like a very interesting childhood, to be constantly working on these Egyptian themed house projects with your parents!
After our tour, we hit up a local ice cream shop we’ve been wanting to try. Then drove by the decommissioned Zion Nuclear Power Plant,
and went to Illinois Beach State Park.
These are all parts of our new town that I’ve been wanting to explore and it was fun to do it with Mica and Harrison!
We also went where we do with every guest – El Famous Burrito!!! And caught up on Game of Thrones so we could watch the newest episode with them Sunday night. It was fun to talk about the show with other people who watch it! (And so weird to watch it the same day it aired!)
And it was really fun to catch up, in general. There are so many stories that are hard to share over electronic communication, and it was a treat to do that face to face.
And we asked them a zillion questions about San Francisco (where they live). I’d love if that was a trip we could make happen next year! We shouldn’t go three years without seeing each other again, and it’s our (overdue) turn to visit!
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