The Rest of Summer

These steamy summer months have been full of making, but obviously making myself sit down to update this blog was not one of them. We made the most of our remaining time with Isaac's little brother here - notably with two excursions I'll share below. I squeezed every minute out of a quick visit with family. Most often though, I came up with a thousand creative solutions to survive the summer heat - this easily feeling like the hottest of the three summers we have lived here in Louisville.

Despite its name, I was still surprised how resilient my sunflowers were to the scorching heat. I planted a few of the seedlings left behind in the kindergarten classroom around our front door and really enjoyed watching them shoot up each day.

We left the sunflowers behind one weekend and sped up to Chicago for some good food. The city's annual food festival - Taste of Chicago - was happening that weekend and so we let our stomachs guide us and trudged through the light rain on Saturday morning to Grant Park.

You purchase tickets at the festival and exchange them for food like you would for rides or games at a fair. Each vendor is a local restaurant or food truck and has just a few items for sale - small "taste" plates and larger servings too. One big negative is that you can't bring drinks in, and once inside you can purchase them only at grossly overcharged prices.

But the festival was worth it because like the name suggests - you get to have little tastes of everything. The three of us bought lunch at four different vendors - Chicago pizza, artisan meatballs, Jamaican and Thai food - a variety difficult to achieve so cheaply or easily if we had to visit these four restaurants on our two night weekend trip.

Besides the festival, we packed in more food and fun - walking to a few of our favorites from last year's visit while also discovering new places together. Amazing sushi at Momotaro, bargain shopping at Uniqlo, fantastic steak dinner at Wildfire Chicago, morning tea at Argo Tea which was like a magical little greenhouse garden tucked in between busy city streets. Our last day was well spent north of the city central eating seolleongtang (that mouth-wateringly comforting Korean oxbone soup) and shopping at super H Mart for Korean groceries and goods.

Isaac's little brother said it had been quite a few years since he'd been to a big American city and so it was a fun trip for all of us to eat our way through Chicago. And although this was only our second visit to the windy city, as long as we live in Louisville, we really must make visiting the city a regular event.

Our other destination was closer to home - Mammoth Caves National Park! It takes about an hour to drive there, and despite the park being an hour behind on central time, because of the relaxed Saturday morning, we just barely made it to our scheduled 9:00 tour time. The park was far more crowded than I remembered from my last visit when I rushed in to get our tickets while the boys parked the car. My heart was pumping as I waited in the back of the winding ticket line at 8:52 when a park ranger called out for anyone with a 9:00am tour time. The ranger seemed to glow and be heaven-sent, and we even had time to use the restroom and grab our bottle of water before heading out. I share this as a good travel tip and note to self - get there with plenty of time to spare, at least if you visit during peak times like midsummer!

The caves were delightfully cool on the already hot and sticky Saturday morning, and our two hour Historic Tour took us through the manmade entrance (there were no icky bugs to be seen!) and passageways both grand and narrow. The route was a first for all three of us; our group made a few stops where the ranger shared history and fun facts, but the most enjoyable part was the 1.5 miles worth of walking through the caves.

Cave selfies are even tougher than regular selfies.

One section of the caves is named Fat Man's Misery - a section where the trail narrows to about a foot and a half or so wide sliver with low ceilings to boot. It was not so bad as much as a bit gross since you could see where parts of the rock were polished from so many humans touching them with greasy body parts. After that was what seemed like the real fat man's misery - several flights (7 or 8?) of stairs up a natural and gorgeous column formation.

Ascending back into the heat and sunlight was miserable but necessary. It was too hot to really enjoy the above ground trails and so we were back in Louisville by lunchtime. A trip to Mammoth Caves is well worth it - you get that feeling of being uncomfortable and small in the grand face of nature, and also that of wonder at natural beauty.

I just want to mention a few more noteworthy things I made and learned from this summer.

I learned kimchi naengmyeon (cold kimchi noodles) is the best dish to cope with dreadfully hot summer afternoons - both to cook and consume. It is so simple to make and so refreshing and cool and light to eat. After paying a professional to teach me how to make macarons (in a fun cooking class with a friend), I learned that I really don't like them enough to bother with making these finicky and expensive cookies at home.

I learned mandu (korean dumplings) are not hard to make yourself and are worth it because of the tang of fresh chives, but that you definitely should ask a friend to help you stuff and fold all 72 of them or else you will sit there alone for two hours.

Lastly, I learned that saving toilet paper and paper towel rolls for a year to make a cabin for your pet rabbit is slightly nuts but also incredibly satisfying.

This summer has been a lot about food and relaxing. I tried cooking more new things in the past few months than I have possibly ever and feel like I might have even stepped up a skill level (fingers crossed). We got to share house with Isaac's little brother and enjoy countless silly moments together. Despite its painful brevity, I got to enjoy time with family old and new and share normal things like long car rides and, yes, more food.

Big changes are coming for us, and I am thankful to have this space to document and share the instants of our lives great and small. More coming, I promise!