Council Hill

Summer is (finally!) over (unofficially), so this past weekend I was able to get out to see one of my favorite local bands.

The Matriarchs is (are?) an all-girl bluegrass band.  I hired them to play at our annual art festival in August and they were SO FUN!

The band was playing at Council Hill Station, an old train station/post office/general store/woolen mill built in the 1850's that now has barn dances and over 90 different kinds of beer.

On our way there, my friend told me about the Ably House, an old, abandoned house where several people had been murdered back in the 1800's.

We immediately started to look for it!

We drove down a long, one-lane road...

through a tunnel...

and then...

EEK!  That's it!

There was a fence (electrified!) and a gate.

We walked around to the back...

the path to the back gate

past the side of the house.

A little electrified fence won't stop me (it doesn't hurt THAT bad.), so I climbed over the back gate, and walked slowly past the side of the house.  As soon as I turned to go onto the front porch, I heard a sound.

A truck!  Driving down the lane right towards us!

Needless to say, I ran.

Then, nothing.  Nobody.  No truck...

Turns out, it was a couple of teenagers who came to the bridge at the edge of the property to fish.

But still.

Scary.

After that excitement, we decided to drive into Galena, a super cute, super touristy little town on the way home.

We wandered around for a little while, laughing about the irony of two adults being chased away by teenagers (isn't it supposed to be the other way around?), then headed into an ice cream shop where it's not scary at all.

GAH!