Sunday’s Visit to South Bend

I closed out summer on a good note yesterday by driving up to South Bend to meet my friend R in person for the first time.

It was a gorgeous sunny morning and the hundred plus miles of highway I drove passed primarily through pretty, placid rural land. I was certainly in a much better frame of mind than I had been the Sunday prior, though the week had been rough and my spirit felt bruised, still.

We met for lunch, and R turned out to be even more awesome in person than she is online. She was much shorter than I was expecting, and also had more of a warmth to her personality than is evident online.

We spent 2 1/2 hours talking, and then she needed to return home, which was disappointing, but I decided since I wasn’t ready to head home yet I’d look for a park to visit, and so found St. Patrick’s, a county park less than 8 miles away where I could go get a walk in.

The park was a lovely place, and I took a lot of pictures, but was disappointed to discover that many had blurred or simply turned out disappointing because of poor lighting. I’ve included a selection of the ones that turned out okay, though they don’t really do the park justice.

I think I spent about 90 minutes wandering around the park, only seeing a relatively small portion of it, then left for home as it seemed the intermittent sprinkling was probably going to become actual rain.