Windy City, The End

Tuesday Vanessa and I had another day of exploring together.  We started the day off by doing a session at the Temple.  The temple reminded us of Portland OR temple.  It was gorgeous inside but we couldn't expect anything less.  It was a pretty small session but that was okay with us.  After we got done we toured the temple and made friends with the workers.  We walked around the outside of the gorgeous temple and took in the beauty of the grounds. If only I could get my flower gardens to look like theirs.  

There is a door there can you find it? 

After the temple Vanessa said she would like to add Wisconsin to her list of states she has visited so we headed North again but not before we ate at Pot Belly's Sandwich shop.  They were amazing.  I love a good sandwich.  We found a Pot Belly's in a cute little strip mall.  I wish we would have had time for more shopping.  I decided as well, I could live in Northern Chicago it was so pretty and homey. 

We traveled up I-94.  We stopped at a place called the Mar's Cheese Castle.  It lied, there was more beer than cheese.  I forgot about that part of Wisconsin, Beer and Brats.  I should have eaten more Brats while up there.  We also, stopped at Wal-Mart for snacks for the plane ride home the next day and a new big bag to pack the snacks in. Wal-Mart is always quite an experience. 

We continued our adventures until we got to Milwaukee.  We headed west then south again.  I want to say again how gorgeous Wisconsin is.  I could totally live there.  It was breath taking.  We loved traveling around and looking at the cute little farms.  We had to stop at the state line and take a pictures of course.  We got quite a few honks and thumbs up from those heading into Wisconsin. We made it back to Itasca in time to head to Lou Malnati's, another pizzeria with Chicago deep dish. It was so good. We liked the crust better than Giordano's  but the toppings better at Giordano's.  It was a hit though.  A nice going out of town meal. 

We flew back to Utah on Wednesday.  We had to hit up the famous Gene and Jude's  for more Chicago Dogs.  They were okay but they were a lot of onion, we got amazing fries with it though.  We picked up Travis and made the long trek to the Southside to turn our rental car in and head to the airport.  It was bitter sweet saying goodbye to the Windy City.  It was fun week but we missed our kids.  Our plane ride home was not as crazy as on the way out, we did however, have a crazy landing in Denver that was experiencing some weather.  I was scared and that doesn't happen often.  The plane was shaking and the landing was so rough.  We said our goodbyes to Vanessa and headed to our plane to Salt Lake.  It was a great vacation but we were so glad to be back as a family together. 

Windy City 4, yes there is still more

Sunday started out raining and cold.  It was supposed to be summer but it felt like early spring.  I forget what a real rain storm is like outside of the desert. It rained all day long, and not just a little drizzle, it seriously rained.  We had to check out of our hotel room this dreary day, go pick up our rental car at the airport that we flew into that was in South Chicago, go to church in North Chicago area, check into our new hotel, watch the big Bears game, and go to Wisconsin to visit some friends.  We had a lot scheduled in a short amount of time. 

We caught the train to head to the airport.  It was a short wet walk to the train station.  The ride to the airport didn't seem to take near as long as the ride to our hotel from the airport the first day.  When we got to the airport we realized we had to take a shuttle to our rental car place.  Not impressed, however, it was the cheapest place.  We got to the rental place and they kept trying to sale us all of these extras and all we wanted was to get going because it was a long drive to the other side of the city and we were hungry. Nobody wants to talk to me when my stomach is empty. 

We finally made it out of the rental car place feeling a little ripped off but happy to have a car and headed to Dunkin' Donuts for some quick breakfast.  We were headed to Arlington Heights area for church.  We had a hard time finding a church that was at a good time.  The church was in a great neighborhood.  Everybody was really welcoming and there were actually some people that were familiar to us that were going to school out there.  Small world. After church we found a nice little place to eat and watch the Bears game.  Apparently, the main religion in Chicago is the Bears.  There were so many Bears fans.  Everybody was wearing their apparel and cheering them on everywhere we went. We stuff ourselves and were ready for a nap after lunch but we still had to head to our new hotel.  The rain had really started to come down after lunch.  Since it cost more to put multiple drivers on the car we just put the car in my name and I was the only driver.  I was not happy about this.  I rarely drive in the city, not that I can't but Travis is such a better city driver and I like to observe my surroundings. I am so happy we had Siri and GPS because my navigators both fell asleep and left me to navigate the toll roads and blinding rain alone.  I was a little nervous to say the least but we made it in one piece and I am an amazing big city driver.  I just channeled Cameron Diaz from "My Best Friends Wedding".  Our new hotel was huge and amazing, it was in Itasca. 

We unloaded the car and laid down on the bed for what we thought was going to be a few minutes.  Two hours later we were waking up.  Travis and I rushed up to Wisconsin to visit our friends, Kellie and Brian Boston.  Driving up to Wisconsin we had to go through more toll roads and more rain.  This time Travis stayed awake the whole time thank goodness.  

The ride up to Wisconsin was amazing and beautiful.  They may not have majestic mountains but the lake, the corn fields, the amazing little barns and farms were great. I told Travis I could live there, he said no there aren't mule deer or elk. It was fun to visit with the Boston's.  We haven't seen them in a long time.  Their kids have gotten so big.  I felt bad though because they thought we had our kids with us so just us adults were quite a disappointment to the little kids. On our way back to Chicago we had to stop to get some cheese.  Who can go to Wisconsin and not get cheese?  There were so many different kinds.  Why oh why don't we have more cheese out here in Utah? 

We did have quite a bit of an adventure on the way back.  We followed the directions that Siri gave us on the way up and didn't pay much attention.  Well on the way back they closed the interstate and didn't give detours to get back to the freeway.  We followed some cars in head of us but soon they turned and we lost them.  Apparently, it was really their exit.  Needless to say we were a little lost and Travis' phone had now died and we forgot the charger.  So we drove and tried to make our way back to where we thought we needed to be. We ended up stopping at a gas station and the cashier only spoke Spanglish.  Good thing that Travis speaks spanish, it didn't help much though because the guy didn't know where we were either it seemed.  We looked at a map and found where we needed to be, which was not that far away.  Yep, that is right Travis and I successfully navigated ourselves in the dark back to where we needed to go. There is nobody I would rather be lost with than Travis. 

Monday Travis had to start his convention so Vanessa and I headed into the city.  We didn't want to drive all the way in and deal with parking downtown so we headed to the nearest train station and rode the train in.  It took FOREVER to get into the city. It was fun to people watch though.  These people weren't near as entertaining as the Southside people, but they were still interesting.  We had a few goals for the day and our first goal was to rent bikes and ride up and down the lake shore sidewalk and see the sights.  This was by far a much needed break from trains and walking.  It was so much fun but it was pretty winding.  Good thing the wind was at our backs for the first part.  We headed south first because there were more sights. The Fountain was our first stop. It was beautiful. We also hit up the Bean, you can't go to Chicago and not see the Bean. It was cool but super busy.  We continued down the walkway and ended up down by the Planetarium.  The waves were huge and coming up on the walk way as we rode our bikes along.   

When we decided to turn around we realized how windy it really was.  We were going so slow but working so hard to move. We went pretty far North to see the different beaches.  It seriously took us about 45 minutes to get to where we turned around.  We stopped and rested for a bit before turning back.  It seriously took us like 15 minutes to get back to the Pier where we rented the bikes since the wind was helping us along. 

We grabbed some lunch and tried to head to the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum.  The maps we had had been pretty accurate so we followed them to our supposed destination.  When we got to where the maps showed us to go we couldn't find the house anywhere, so we did the thing we should have done to begin with we Googled it. Turns out we were in the wrong part of town, seriously, one of the only things I wanted to see and we were going to miss it because the tours stopped at 4 and it was 3:30 and we were miles away. I was so bummed.  To help the mood we headed back to the Art Museum and toured a little.  We got there about 4 and the place closed at 5. Needless to say we felt cheated again.  If only we wouldn't have wasted so much time going to the wrong place.  The Art Museum was really cool and we just had to breeze through it. Vanessa was even surprised at her reaction that she was really upset we didn't get to see very much of the museum.  We ran into a very testy lady who with ten minutes til closing would not let us into her gallery, she was all "Uh- uh turn right around and go make your way to the exit." Bummer.  We tried to cheer ourselves up by getting some Pink Berry.  Why oh why do we not have more in Utah?  Their Fro-Yo is awesome. 

To end the day we headed back to pick up Travis to head to dinner.  We went to dinner at Benihana's  and it was awful.  Such a waste of a dinner.  I hate when that happens.  There were so many cool places to eat and we wasted it. All in all though the day was cool and we had fun.  Lots of stories. 

Windy City Part 3......

Saturday we were feeling really, really ambitious.  We were going to hit the Aquarium, The Planetarium, and the Natural History Museum all in one day starting at 9 in the morning and ending by 5 when they all closed. It was a good thing they were all really close together. 

We started at the Aquarium and it was a good thing we did because when we left there was a huge line waiting to get in.  It was a nice little experience but our passes only got us into certain parts of the Aquarium.  That was one downfall of the Go Pass.  We were able to hit a lot of different areas though.  We walked through halls that were labeled different rivers, lakes, and seas that contained cool fish from all over the world.  Some of the fish were really scary looking with huge teeth, some of the fish were amazingly colorful.  

We saw some otters in one exhibit and as one swam by I am pretty sure he waved and smiled at me.  I am not even kidding. We saw a Beluga whale and penguins.  Penguins are awesome.  They are so cute and fast swimmers. One of the main attractions was a hall full of different types of jelly fish.  They are cool things, but scary. Some come in really crazy shapes and sizes. We didn't stay too long in the aquarium but we saw all that our passes allowed us to. 

The friendly otter

Jellies everywhere.  I wanted to touch them so bad

After the Aquarium we decided we should finally try a Chicago Dog. I cheated and got ketchup on mine.  What is a hot dog without ketchup?  Travis and Vanessa gave me such a hard time.  I may have also let the tomatoes fall off and not put them back on.  Oh well. I guess I am a picky eater. They were really good though. I would like to recreate them but I am having a hard time finding sport peppers and the poppy seed buns. 

We walked down the way to the Planetarium which was closed the day before.  We learned upon arrival we also were only allowed into certain parts of the Planetarium which was okay because we got our fill of space while we were there.  We were able to watch a movie on Space Junk, that was crazy to think about.  We were also able to look into some huge, powerful telescopes.  We saw some things on the sun called prominence's, which is...  a large, bright, gaseous feature extending outward from the Sun's surface, often in a loop shape, and we were able to see sun spots.  Apparently, we are all happy to let the space be in the space and to have our feet one the ground.  It was cool to learn about some planets and comets but we decided we would rather spend more time at the Natural History Museum.   

Wow the Sun! 

The Natural History Museum was AWESOME! I could have spend all day in there had I taken more snacks and been able to ride around for a little bit.  My feet kept getting tired even though I was wearing good shoes.  Apparently, I need to practice standing for long periods of time? When we walked in while waiting at the ticket counter I looked behind me at a huge staircase and thought wow this place would be a great location for a wedding. We started out by going into a huge exhibit on ancient Egypt.  It was like a maze.  We wound through areas that had mummies and artifacts from different tombs.  We saw how they built pyramids.  It was very educational and I wish I read faster because I didn't have time to read all of the signs.  Once we made it out of Ancient Egypt we headed into an exhibit that was about bugs and soil.  It was like I went back to school to my soil classes.  It was a cool exhibit but short.  

We decided to head into the animal exhibit.  This exhibit was awesome.  They had all kinds of stuffed animals from all over the world.  They even had the skulls for the lions that killed a lot of people in Africa, that the movie Ghost in the Darkness is based on.  It was interesting to read about them and see if Hollywood did them justice or not.  The Animal exhibit was huge and took awhile to get out of.  Every exhibit was maze like to fit the most in a small space.  

Once out of the "zoo" we headed over to the Native American Exhibit.  This exhibit was AWESOME! I am very interested in the Native Americans and their life pre-European.  They had displays for each region and time period.  The exhibit was massive.  I think we spent 2 hours trying to get out of the exhibit.  Unfortunately, it was also in this exhibit we realized that Chicago dog didn't last very long in our bellies. It was so amazing to see the innovations of each civilization and how they adapted to live in their region and time period.  They had a whole hut of a Pawnee Indian tribe.  I thought all plains Indians had tepees.  I was wrong.  The hut was huge. We walked through a whole gallery of ceremonial dress also.  The work it would have taken to make the different dress for men and women was remarkable. 

We finally made it out of the Native American exhibit and headed up to the exhibit hall of Jewels. It was awesome. Not quite what I was expecting.  I couldn't imagine wearing jewelry that was worth more than all the cars I have own combined.  The jewels were breath taking though. I should have taken more pictures.  We were starting to get tired by this point though.  Hence the lack of pictures.  

Be afraid be very afraid, Laraine is going to keep us in here for hours and hours

The Lions Skulls from Ghost in the Darkness.  Nobody knows how big the lions actually were because their skins had been used to for rugs and deteriorated throughout the years. 

The last exhibit we hit up was the Traveling the Pacific exhibit, so Travis could connect with his roots.  I wish we would have been able to spend more time in this exhibit but we were all pretty tired and it was about closing time.  We got to see some pretty cool stuff but we didn't get to spend much time at each display, therefore, I didn't get to read very much and it made me a little grumpy.  I did however, used to work at the Polynesian Culture Center and it felt similar in there.   

Maori House

I was right about the place being an awesome place for a wedding.  As we were leaving the crew was setting up for a wedding party.  

As we were leaving we noticed everybody and their dog heading over to Soldier Field for the big game between Washington and Illinois.  We were bummed we didn't think to get tickets.  We tried to get Bears tickets but they were way too expensive.  We settled instead to go to a sports bar and watch 10 games at once and gorge ourselves because we were starving!