Raven's Grin Inn

A couple of days ago, a short note on Boing Boing (A Directory of Wonderful Things) sent me to the Vicious Cargo blog. There was a description of a haunted house in Mt. Carroll, Illinois. Illinois? I live in Illinois! And she compared it to (or mentioned it in the same sentence as) the Grotto of the Redemption, which I love. So... I put the call out to my friends for a FuzzyCo LastMinute FunFest! We would drive two-and-a-half hours, visit the Raven's Grin Inn, have a Dairy Queen or whatever they have in Mt. Carroll, and drive back to Chicago. And that's pretty much the way it went down, except that we had Dairy Queen on the way there. Oh, and we followed Yahoo Maps directions to get there, so it took 3 hours to get there, but when we followed Jim's directions to come home, it took just over two hours. More proof that Jim's the man.

The brave crew: Me, Rebecca, and Stephanie. Yes, I have green hair right now. It's a Halloween thing.

We couldn't take any pictures inside, so I just have a small selection from outside. And Mr. Tuxedo was absent last night, which was disappointing, because Mustapha is a Tuxedo cat also. Crap, I just linked to my own webpage about my cats.

The ticket window.

The front door.

Portapotty, coffin, and giant skull (how's that for a still life?). Rebecca declared that the portapotty was the nicest she had ever been in.

Our genial host - Jim Warfield.

The crew, post-tour. The best thing about the Raven's Grin is that it's open year-round (301 days a year, as Jim says). So go!

This doesn't really have much to do with the Raven's Grin, but when I pulled onto my street at 2:30 AM, I was surprised to see a raccoon. I live in a very urban part of Chicago and the biggest (wild) animal I've seen before this were scrawny squirrels.

And so I was even more surprised to see another raccoon behind me while I snapping a picture of the first one.

[Tuesday, 2001.10.30]