This hardly seems as if it's still Illinois Tourist Attraction season, but the weather was just pleasant enough that we drove an hour and a half for...
The Largest Sculpture in the World
Now, you're saying to yourself, how could the largest sculpture in the world be an hour and a half from Chicago and no one knows about it? I mean, your
Mt. Rushmore and your
Crazy Horse and your
Stone Mountain are all pretty well known, and their decades of construction ensure publicity. You're thinking, could there be a 500-foot-tall Lincoln somewhere I don't know about? (There is in fact a
giant Lincoln somewhere downstate, but it's only 60 feet high, scarcely knee-high to Stone Mountain's Lee if, in fact, he had knees.)
In the end it all depends on how you define largest. A series of earthworks, built on an old mining site next to Buffalo Rock State Park, in the shape of local fauna,
Effigy Tumuli is, at its highest point, only 15 or 20 feet above the ground surrounding it. But its five individual artworks are each several hundred feet long; I can't find a figure for the total acreage covered but suffice it to say that we spent two hours climbing all five and walking back. As the photos on that page suggest, the best place to actually see the forms is from is an airplane (one in fact circled as we tromped around), but the kids had a good time climbing the shapes and playing the cloud-animal-shapes game of trying to make out what exactly they were standing on:
(Back of the water strider, looking out toward the antennae.)
And enjoying the bucolic scene, full of things you don't see everyday in the city both large (a passing barge) and small:
The nearest town is Ottawa, site of
the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, as commemorated in this sculpture, which brings together three great Americans: Lincoln, Douglas, and
S.L. Rothapfel:
Ottawa, alas, had already disappointed me foodwise on a visit to Starved Rock State Park about five years ago; a diner called the Bee Hive looked so full of promise and Sterns-perfect, and turned out to be a very mediocre 1970s coffeeshop. We saw another one called The Green Mill and were about to try it when my wife pointed out the sign in the window announcing "Senior Specials." (An oxymoron when applied to food, surely.)
We wound up at the polar opposite of those two, a hip little cafe called Row House, the kind of place that offers a Southwestern chicken salad and panini on the same menu and service squeezed into spare moments during the social life of the staff, but it was pleasant enough, and on the waitress' recommendation we tried this brand of sodas:
The cream soda itself was not that great, but the blueberry was
delightful, as G Wiv would say, and well worth looking for at your nearest Woodman's or wherever products from Wisconsin are sold. Plus, it was cool to think that Lincoln or Douglas
could have knocked one back on that long afternoon of debate.
Alas, this promising-looking place was closed on Sunday:
but perhaps another time we will return to Ottawa. Probably August 21, 2008, to be precise.
Row House Café
728 Columbus St.
Ottawa, IL
815-434-3171