Destination: Galena

We made it! We finally visited Galena. Between bad weather and other responsibilities, it wasn't as easy as it seemed.

Holograms of Ulysses S. Grant
and his wife Julia

Those rooms under the stairs...

Galena is a beautiful town and tourist destination. It has a wealth of haunted history, along with a wealth of history, period. I used it as a setting in one of my Epitaph books, when Garth takes Sandra out of town to get away from her psycho ex. It's the perfect place for a girls' weekend (I've done one there, myself) and this year they're doing a romance writers event in connection with their official girls' weekend in September. Since I'm always looking for an excuse to go, I signed up to be there next year. 

In addition to a cute downtown area with all kinds of specialty shops, Galena has outdoor activities. Golf. A zipline. Hunting, for those hunter/provider types. Fair warning. It's a tourist destination, so as charmed as you are by the corner candy store, they're going to charge you twice what you'd pay for that saltwater taffy than you would at home. They have ghost tours every night -- not ghost hunting expeditions, mind you, just historical tours with ghost stories. And the history is rich. If you're walking down the main drag, make sure you look up. You might see a horse looking down on you from a second-story window. I've never been there when there wasn't a significant amount of foot traffic. And did I mention the recreational options? 

We went specifically to see the holograms in the history museum, which we'd seen before, but which had new appeal for me with my current project. You'll note in the photo I took that you can see through Julia Grant--sort of like you might expect to see through a ghost. Galena is a day trip, so we had to justify the time and gas to get there. I would have preferred to go for a weekend but will save that for another time (maybe next year!). 

While we were there, we toured the home Ulysses S. Grant occupied when he wasn't in St. Louis or Washington (after he was elected president). There are also homes of other historical notables available to tour, and a mansion - Belvedere - that is as much a museum as anything else. When nearby Dubuque failed to build their art museum, many of their treasures were sent to the mansion, where they are on display. 

The town has a wine tasting room, and there is a bourbon distillery in addition to the vineyards. They also had (and I wish I'd remembered this while writing my Hillendale books!) mystic shops. Herbology. Tarot readings. When I was writing THE TWINS (Epitaph 2), I'd been trying to find a place to buy Palo Santo so I could accurately describe the scent. I ended up mail ordering some (not sorry, because I have an adorable cat carved from the wood). In Galena, I found Palo Santo sticks packaged with sage smudges in a store that also sold spell books. 

Going from one block to the next.
Good cardio!

As with most tourist towns, the specialty shops come and go, so there's always something different. We had lunch at a little pub called Durty Gurt's, filled with fun, snarky signs to read while we were waiting. There's an Italian restaurant with a front door on the "low" street. When you walk up the stairs to the next block (the elevation between blocks is significant), there's a terrace for the restaurant halfway up the hill. Some of the streets between blocks aren't navigable by car and consist of staircases or brick-paved ramps. 

The trip accomplished what I'd set out to do, and then some. The weather was beautiful, and it was nice to get out of the house for the day.

Getting away from it all - Travelogue

DH and I took a quick break from the real world this past weekend. We visited picturesque Galena, Illinois and stayed in a lovely bed and breakfast (the significance of that will make more sense when Living Canvas gets released).  Acknowledgement to steller innkeepers Lorraine and Jan Svec for making us feel at home.

I also took the time to visit a bed and breakfast in Dubuque - shout out to Amy Boynton of the Mandolin Inn, who I interviewed when I was developing Living Canvas.  Although I've stayed in B&B's before, the inspiration for the one I wrote didn't fit with the vision I needed, so I did some online research and stumbled on a closer image for what I wanted to convey. Castle Valley Inn is a mash of many different places, but with Amy's kind assistance, I was able to create a stronger vision. Finally getting the chance to see Mandolin Inn, I was not dissapointed. The place is Beautiful (yes, that's a capital "B"). Gorgeous. Awesome. Thanks to Amy for her kind hospitality.

But back to Galena. This is what we saw the first night. Have I mentioned the new book includes those "moments of grace" when the world seems to stop?

My husband is an excellent photographer and he took some beautiful pictures (like this one of the sunbeams breaking through the clouds).

Galena is a tourist type of town filled with little shops to browse (I'm not much of a shopper, but its fun to look in the windows). 

And the thing about Galena is that they don't have alleyways, they have stairways between buildings that lead to the next block over (or, more accurately, up).  Built in a "driftless" area (this is an area of land untouched by glacial erosion), it is one of the few hilly parts of the flat Midwest.