07 / 02 / 13

T  H  E   C  I  T  Y

mt. vernon, il

These are some more photos from my excursion to southern Illinois two weeks ago.  Se In is the hot tamale in the black dress, and we two shared a room at the Royal Inn for the weekend.  When she booked our room, Se In didn't know that the inn offered nifty gospel tracts free of charge or that we would share our stoop with a he-man hitchhiker but we found that all out when we got there.  One of the locks on our room was broken so she would push a chair against the door every night, but we had a nice view of a chain link fence out our window, and the ice machine was just a few yards down the hall from us.  It didn't have any ice in it, but I suppose that's not really pertinent.  It was nice to stay somewhere where for once your cool 80s minivan with the stripe on the side wasn't the best ride around.  Ha.

We had a lot of fun, though, jumping on the bed and playing our loud music late at night and (some of us) dancing around the room in our underwear and seeing how many of us could squeeze into our queen-sized bed when we invited our friend Abbey Goldberg over for a night.  Even though Se In was disappointed our surroundings weren't as regal as the inn's moniker had misled her to believe they would be, the owner was exceptionally gracious and helpful, and I wouldn't mind booking another stay at the Royal Inn if I was ever in Mt. Vernon again.

Photos were taken using a Pentax ME loaded with Fujifilm 800.