If you look at a map of the U.S., there's a few routes that will get you from Pensacola FL to Wisconsin. They all have one things in common: they pass through Illinois. Unfortunately, there isn't much camping in Illinois, and what camping there is... is generally not great. We've stated in small town city parks the last couple times through, which were nice enough for a night, but not someplace you'd want to spend any time¹.

But nothing is all bad either. We call the route we take Maximum Illinois since it enters at the southernmost point and exits at the northern most. Somewhere in there we knew there were great places and we were going to find them damnit.

We considered some places on Harvest Hosts, but those are generally only for 24 hours. We needed somewhere to stay while a snow storm (hopefully the last!) dumped a foot or more where we were headed in Wisconsin. This is how we ended up at Ferne Clyffe State Park, which had never quite fallen at the right mileage point for stopping. This time we did an extra long day and made it. It's good we did because Ferne Clyffe is without a doubt the nicest place we've been in Illinois.

We pulled into a nearly empty campground, which was fortunate because we hadn't even thought about making reservations ahead of time. I can't tell you the last time we did that. I loved the place already.

It was still very much winter when we arrived the last week in March. The tree limbs were still leafless, skeleton arms scratching at the still-wintery sky. But Ferne Clyffe was lush with lichens, moss, and ferns growing in clusters wherever water leached out of the limestone cliffs and beautifully carved canyon walls.

After six weeks in the tightly-policed, don't-even-think-about-climbing-it "nature" of Fort Pickens, the kids were eager to get climbing all over Ferne Clyffe. Happily there were no signs telling them not too, and no one around to tell them otherwise. We pretty much had the place to ourselves and climb they did.

There seems to be a fundamental human need to climb. I don't mean technical rock climbing, I mean getting to the top of things. I have no idea why. To add to Edmund Hilary's famous quote about climbing Everest, the best I can think of is, because we're alive, and it's here. But then asking why? rarely leads to interesting experiences, why not? is a more rewarding guide to life.

Whatever the case I've noticed that when there are rocks or trees to climb our kids are happy. Almost all their favorite spots, like Valley of Fire, Zion, and the place in Utah I never named among others, all have rocks or trees to climb.

Ferne Clyffe had a network of trails running through the various canyons (one main canyon with a couple of offshoots). It's not a huge place, but it was enough to keep our days filled with hiking and climbing and birding.

I got the kids jeweler's loupes for studying and sketching. The endless moss and lichens of Ferne Clyffe gave them a chance to use them. Studying moss through a loupe you quickly discover that the form of the surrounding forest is repeated in the carpet of moss. What we call moss is in fact tiny forests living on the rocks and fallen trees, living at a different scale, but nearly identical means. The smallest thing is in the biggest thing, the biggest thing is in the smallest thing.

"Learning to see mosses is more like listening than looking," writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Gathering Moss. "Straining to hear a faraway voice or catch a nuance in the quiet subtext of a conversation requires attentiveness, a filtering of all the noise, to catch the music. Mosses are not elevator music; they are the intertwined threads of a Beethoven quartet."

To be unhurried in our world has come to seem a luxury. It's not. Anyone can do it, but it does take effort. It does mean being quiet, listening, taking the time to be calm, careful, and conscious of what you're doing. I like to keep in mind something I read once that your power is proportional to your ability to relax. Do you have the power to relax right now? Use it.

The loupes are nice because they make it easy to shut out the rest of the world visually. They narrow your focus to a tiny part, which you can then carefully explore, watching it unfold into its own world. You can then stack loupes and narrow it down even more if you want.

We looked and listened, hiked and climbed.

It was a good week. Good enough in fact that when we all got sick toward the end of it, no one really minded. We spent a few days indoors recovering, and then headed north for the one state park in Wisconsin that opens on April 1.

We maxed out our time at Fort Pickens. After six weeks, it was time to move on. We had planned to go to New Orleans, and then up into the Ozarks, before heading back up to Wisconsin for the summer, but given how mild the winter turned out to be, we decided to press north sooner than usual.

Our first stop was not far away, Mobile Bay. We've driven by Meaher State Park a dozen times by this point but we'd never stopped. This year we decided to see what it was like. We were a little early for bird migration, which is one of its claims to fame, but it's right in the middle of Mobile bay, so it had great views.

It's also right down the street from the battleship Alabama.

The USS Alabama was a lot like the battleship North Carolina, but without the cool paint job.

What it did have, was the nicest ice cream bar of any of the three battleships we've toured. All things considered, the kids decided the Alabama was the best place to be stationed. Not only did it never take any significant hits in its lifetime of service, the ice cream situation was unmatched in the Navy. So far as we know.

The mess hall on the other hand left much to be desired.

Like the North Carolina, the Alabama's main gun turrets were open to explore.

We'd planned to check out the city of Mobile too, but the weather conspired against us with rain and thunderstorms most of the time we were in the area. We never did make it to downtown, but one of the great things about living this way is you don't really have to worry about missing something, you can always come back.

Despite what you often hear, I've come to feel like the road is long, that life is long. There's plenty of time, and no reason to rush. That feeling that we need to hurry up comes from living in the future. We're in a rush to get to the futures we imagine. There's nothing wrong with planning for the future, but I try to make sure I'm living in the here and now and not rushing through today to get to tomorrow.

The one upside to getting kicked out of Fort Pickens for a storm that never hit, was meeting the pilot.

The bus, wherever it goes, is conspicuous. It is especially conspicuous in the middle of an otherwise empty parking lot. Next to the parking lot was a collection of condos, and several people came over, curious about the bus. One, who was walking two dogs, stopped to let the kids pet them.

We got to talking and mentioned that we were headed to the recently re-opened Navy Air Museum, and he said, "oh, a couple of my old planes are in there." Say what? It turned out that had he been a Navy pilot and flight instructor at NAS Pensacola for many years.

Elliott is currently fascinated by war, as I think most young boys are at some point, but he's especially fascinated by planes, which is why we were headed back to the Navy Air Museum. Knowing that he was talking to someone who had actually flown the planes he has models of was almost too much for him.

Later the pilot brought out some of his old flight logs for Elliott to look at, and then, when we were leaving to go back to Fort Pickens, he gave Elliott a pair of his Navy wings. It will be some years I imagine before the significance of that sinks in, but I put them in a safe place in the mean time.

We went to the Navy Air Museum once before, but the kids were young enough that they don't have many memories of it. We tried to go back last year, but the base has been closed to the public since the shooting in 2019. This winter the museum finally re-opened to the public. After a couple of days back at Fort Pickens we had to leave for 24 hours (you can't stay on federal land for more than 14 consecutive nights), so we went over to Big Lagoon State Park, which is just down the road from the Navy Air Museum.

Like most men my age, I wanted to be a naval aviator. After Top Gun came out, who didn't? I went so far as to apply to the Naval Academy. I even met with my congressman to get his endorsement (required as part of the application process). I was pretty sure I'd be accepted, but unfortunately, junior year in high school, when I was doing all this, it became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to hide my less than perfect vision.

I ended up with glasses and my dream of flying for the Navy went away as soon as I put them on. I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to do in the Navy, so I dropped my application to the Naval Academy and moved on to other things. But I never lost my awe for flying, or my love of naval aviation history.

The Navy Air Museum has an immense collection of planes spread across three huge buildings, with a few outside as well. It's the best collection of navy planes I've ever seen, and to have someone we knew tell use where his planes were made it that much more fun.

At this point I think I sound like a broken record, but what makes the Navy museum great is what makes any museum great: letting people actually touch things. The Navy Air Museum has plenty of cockpits to climb in, fuselages to crawl through, and even a presidential helicopter where you can sit down inside.

There's some good historical information too, including a few of my favorite museum displays, the diorama.

The dioramas, and more broadly, history according to the Navy, would lead you to think there was nothing so exciting as war. My first thought was that that's ridiculous, but the more I walked around the museum, the more I wondered if maybe the Navy is right.

While some people would like to deny it, there is a part of human beings that seems genetically hardwired to enjoy fighting. Every culture I'm aware of has produced a warrior element dedicated to fighting. And yes, many people in those warrior elements like it. I understand that feeling. I feel it in JuiJitsu. It's satisfying to submit someone, I imagine the satisfaction is even greater the higher the stakes get.

The kids were drawn to the dioramas because they gave a glimpse of life as it used to be, from wooden huts of the world wars, to a Vietnam era berth on an aircraft carrier. I'd be lying if I said those glimpses of life didn't look appealing. I'm sure sitting around drinking wine in a wooden hut in France, circa 1917 was fun when nothing else was happening. The part where people came and dropped bombs on you, killed your friends, possibly killed you, that's the part left out of the diorama. But what if that part only served to make those moments of peacefulness more valuable? What if you need struggle to appreciate the lack of struggle?

What if when we're looking back at earlier times and finding them more appealing than our own, we aren't looking at history through rose-colored glasses? What if what appeals to us isn't the so-called simpler times, but the opposite, harder times? What if hard is good, struggle is good, and that's why the past is so appealing?