2296. Go to the Sock Monkey Museum in Long Grove

 One of things I wanted to do while in Long Grove was to visit the Sock Monkey Museum. I am not quite sure how I first came across the Sock Monkey Museum but it definitely sounded like a fun museum. I knew the hubby wouldn't be interested in it but it was a perfect girls weekend trip.

The Sock Monkey Museum is located downtown Long Grove. They are open 12-4 Thursday, Friday, and Sunday and 12-5 on Saturdays. There is plenty of free parking in the area. It is $6/adult and $4/child to visit.

The first floor is full of sock monkeys, a store, and an area where you can have birthday parties and sock monkey making classes.

Most of the museum is upstairs. A guide will take you upstairs and explain all about the history of sock monkeys, the various sock monkeys in the collection, and then let you browse the collection on your own. You can take all the pictures you want except for a special friend that greetings you when you enter the museum.

There are sock monkeys galore... in every nook and cranny imaginable. 

They have their playroom which rumor has it is a lot of fun but no one has been able to catch as sock monkey having fun.. just heard them.

There is even a scavenger hunt. There are so many sock monkeys that even if the guides haven't found all the sock monkeys in the scavenger hunt. I found three in the short time we were there.

Of course no good novelty museum is complete without some pop culture references. 

I even managed to find a sock monkey in Superman's Phone Booth.

This one is the oldest sock monkey in their collection.. almost 95 years old. From what I saw on Facebooks she now has her own throne.

We could have spent all day at the museum trying to find all the sock monkeys and I still don't think we would have seen them all. 

The Sock Monkey Museum makes you feel like a kid again and is just a feel good museum. It is definitely worth checking if for no other reason that to see over 2200 sock monkeys.

2291. Go to the Schaumburg Sculpture Park in Schaumburg

 I am a sucker for a sculpture park. I love to see random sculptures and have I've seen random random sculptures over the years. When I stumbled upon the Schaumburg Sculpture Park I figured it would be a good stop if we needed to kill time before the Sock Monkey Museum open in Long Grove.

The Schaumburg Sculpture Park is located on the grounds on Municipal Center. It is open year round. It is free to visit. We parked by the Al Larson Prairie Center. 

At first we were confused on where these sculptures were located it as we didn't see any. There was an open grassy area with a walking trail but no sculptures in sight. We headed towards the fountain on the other side of the Prairie Center. We found Awaking Muse which was a lady half buried in a hill. It was actually very beautiful sculpture. It would have been fun to take picture on but it was roped off.

Wandering a bit we found a very weird wire sculpture called Fiberware. It was hard to see in the sunshine since it was thin metal rods sticking up from the ground. It really didn't even look like art.

Finally we found a trail that headed into the woods and it was marked as the sculpture park. 

Initially we were going to walk to the first sculpture which we thought looked like a toilet. 

Since we found the path, we decided to keep going to see what else there was. We found some pretty cool art. Each piece was unique and some were left up to more interpretation than others. 

The path was not very long. It ended near a church parking lot and we had to turn around and go back the same way we came. 

To be honest, it was not much of a sculpture park... Sculpture path maybe. I was expecting a decent walk to check out art. If we spent 30 minutes at the sculpture park, that was a lot. I'm glad it was free because if I paid money, I would have really felt ripped off. 

Now don't get me wrong, if you appreciate art and nature you might find this place enjoyable to to a casual visitor looking for some fun art, there really wasn't much. We did have time to kill so I guess it was worth it in that sense but overall I left disappointed. I saw more fun sculptures at Edgewood Orchard Galleries in Door County. 

2303. Go to the Graue Mill & Museum in Oak Brook

 When I was playing around finalizing plans for Girls Weekend,  I stumbled upon a place called Graue Mill & Museum in Oak Brook. We had plans to see Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Oak Brook so I added to the list in case we had time. We definitely did have time to check it out.

Graue Mill & Museum is located on the Salt Creek in the Forest Preserve in DuPage County. The mill and museum is open 10-4 Wed-Sun and is free to visit. There is a parking lot across the road. 

This was the perfect spot to hit on Sunday morning since it opened at 10. We figured being a mill there might be outdoor things to look at before the museum opened. Since it is part of the Forest Preserve, there is walking trail along the creek. Even if you don't want to check out the mill, the preserve looked like a great place for a walk.

Graue Mill & Museum is one of two operating water powered grist-mills in Illinois. Built in 1852, it served area farmers as a place to grind the grain into flour. The grist-mill ground all sorts of grains into flour and feed including wheat, barley, and corn. They do presentations on how the mill works on the weekends at 2. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for that. 

The first floor of the mill, shows how the mill operated. It is all wooden and uses simple machines to make run the actual mill. Mr. Graue was able to grind about 150 pounds of flour an hour using his innovative system by himself. 

In the basement you can see more of the gears and simple machines that ran the mill.

Upstairs is set up as a museum to show life in the 1850s. Back when the mill was operational, there was no floors it was just open space all the way to the ceiling.

The museum featured different rooms and buildings as you would find in the area back in the 1850s. It was not just a haphazard collection of artifacts. It was put together very concisely and made a lot of sense. 

This was definitely a hidden gem. Sometimes playing on Google Maps allows you to come across some hidden gems you may never have found before. Even if we didn't get here on girls weekend, it went on the bucket list because it sounded interesting and I wanted to check it out. If you find yourself in DuPage County, definitely go check out the Graue Mill & Museum. 

Checking out Wilder Park Conservatory

 As we were planning girls weekend I realized that everything we wanted to do on Sunday opened at 10 or later which means we had time to kill after breakfast. If I did my research properly, I may had us explore DuPage County Forest Preserve a little before hitting the Graue Mill. I did however stumble upon the Wilder Park Conservatory in Elmhurst.

Wilder Park Conservatory is located in Wilder Park and is open 8-6 daily. There is a parking nearby and it is free to visit. It consists of several greenhouse as well as formal gardens outside with a wedding space.

Wilder Park was the perfect spot to sit and eat out donuts before starting our day. After we had our donuts, we checked out the conservatory. 

Inside the Conservatory there are native and exotic plants and small koi pond. 

I personally liked the stone archway that lead to more native plants.

Outside was a giant kaleidoscope. I love using these and watch the flowers transfer into geometric shapes.

The outside gardens were still a blaze of color in the late summer sun. Some were getting towards the end of the season but it was still lush and colorful. There were a lot of native plants. 

The garden was set up for a recent wedding. We didn't venture down. The arbor was beautiful.

Wilder Park Conservatory did not take us long but it was a great start to our day. Many other people thought so too. If you are in Elmhurst the Conservatory and park are definitely worth checking out.