I'm not saying that in mean way. Honestly.
Since we didn't really have anything going on today, I wanted to get out of the house. Yesterday we were running errands and such (tis' our normal routine on Saturdays), then last night we went to a friends house party. We needed to unwind a little since (as you can probably tell from my last post), I'm a lil on edge and Eric's had a pretty busy week.
So, I told Eric that I wanted to "get lost" for a little while since it was actually warm out today AND there was sunshine! I mean, you gotta take advantage of the weather when it's in your favor AND you're not stuck at work, right? Well, Eric preferred to take a nap in his recliner, so I ditched him for a few hours and ran around the Belgian countryside and ended up somewhere in The Netherlands. It sounds so simple to lose yourself around here, but in all honesty, it wasn't! I took little back rounds and different routes that what I was used to..yet, still ended up in area's I was familiar with. I NEVER turned my TomTom on the entire time I was out! Even when it was time to head home!
Here's some pictures of the different places I saw:
There's a windmill past the base I've been meaning to stop and check out. I mean, it's only taken me a year and a half to actually hit the breaks and pull over :)
I was messing around with the editing program I use.. I didn't know which one to pick, so here's both styles of the blades:
Then from there, I continued on..I think I ended up in Eksel, not really sure though. While I was just toodlin' along, I saw this:
I pulled over and went to check it out since it seemed pretty random, yet, interesting. Turns out it's an old fountain for the town. I really liked it cause of the old school scroll work all over it.
On the way back to the Xterra, there was this little cottage type house that looked like it was lacking some TLC, but had plenty of character. I figured I'd take a picture of it's corner:
On the road again..left turn here, right turn there.. I honestly wasn't paying attention to where I was going. Then I passed by this statue and immediately pulled over:
It's a memorial statue for the men that were lost in WW1 who were from that town. It was pretty interesting to look at, even though I couldn't understand what any of the carvings said:
This is the back of the monument (it's a sword with garland leaves):
Back into my truck I went.. I finally got to the point to where I was ready to head on back to the house since I felt a headache coming on, despite chugging tons of water and taking some migraine medication.
On the way home, I was driving past the canal on the border of The Netherlands and Belgium and managed to find a spot to pull over. I was surprised how "quiet" that strip of road was considering that's a main highway from one country to the other:
The canal:
There was this pretty neat looking marker to state where the border of Belgium was:
Map coordinates:
The year that the marker was placed at it's location:
And the crest of Belgium (a regal lion and crown ):
Once I strolled across the street, I was back in the lovely country of Belgie :)
So, yeah. That about sums up my afternoon of driving around the country side. We'll be heading over to Germany next weekend.. I can definitely get myself lost over there and I'm looking forward to it :)
