THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

Bit behind, so I’ll just recap the final days of our vacation.

Day 5 (Friday) we decided to just take it easy. We were kind of worn out of having to commute 2 hours one-way into downtown, so we decided not to on Friday. Our plans were to go see the Lincoln Park zoo, but we figured hey, we can see animals all the time – really what were we going to see that we couldn’t see at the Cincinnati zoo?

We drove up to go see the LDS Chicago Temple. It was cool to show the kids around the temple grounds – they seemed somewhat excited. We got some good pictures too. While we were in the area, we stopped by the Chicago LDS bookstore. It took quite the Googling to try and find out what it was called. I knew that I would know it when I saw it, and sure enough I eventually stumbled upon “Words of Wisdom bookstore” and I knew it must be it.

We browsed around for awhile – we ended up just getting a miniature Children’s songbook for Amy. There were a lot of things that looked nice, but everything was just so expensive. I had the idea that someone should start an LDS lending library. Just like the regular library, but it would have church books. I’d imagine that in Utah or places out west, that you could get books like the Work and the Glory set, or The Other Side of Heaven, or stuff like that out of the regular library. Not so much here. But it would be neat to be able to I think….

Anyways, Friday night we just hung out and swum and such. We did notice a building right next to our hotel that looked suspiciously like an LDS chapel and what do you know, it was.

Saturday we were out bright and early. Packed, dressed, ate and were on the road by 8:30. There shouldn’t be any traffic on 8:30 on a Saturday morning, right? Right? WRONG! Madness pretty much. We headed into downtown on 290 East, and it was pretty smooth sailing for awhile, but it got so bad that I got off the highway, headed south to I-55 on local roads and took I-55 into downtown and then 94/90/80 south. I-55 was pretty clear going into downtown so I’m guessing there must have been an accident or something on 290.

Lots of rain on the turnpike heading to Cleveland. From what I hear, there was lots of rain all week back in Ohio – we hardly had any in Chi-town. It rained so hard while we were driving that cars pulled off to the side of the road, which seems kind of silly to me. Silly for one in that it wasn’t really raining THAT bad (though it was coming down pretty good), but it just doesn’t seem to make sense, especially when driving east. Here’s my rationale – weather typically travels west to east, and not as fast as a car (i.e. not 60 mph). So if you pull over, yes, eventually it will pass by you, but then as you continue to drive east, you’ll just catch it AGAIN! Anyway we got to my parents house around 5 and ate and hung out.

We drove home Sunday and it was pretty uneventful. We were glad everyone was back in their own beds….

Overall, a good trip. Budget broke down:

Lodging:
Hotel: $749.25

Food:
Ice Cream: $2.53
Lou Malnati’s Pizza: $26.17
Milk / Bread: $4.05

Entertainment:
Children’s Song book: $15.10
2 Cubs Tickets: $55.10
Museum of Science and Industry: FREE
Children’s Museum: FREE

Transportation:
Gas: $33.98
Gas: $26.43
Tolls: $9.90
CTA Visitor passes: $40.00

Total: $962.51, 38 dollars under budget, though I suppose it could be argued that some of the supplies I bought before the trip could be counted here (I didn’t because I bought them with gift cards I’ve accumulated). Or it could be argued that the song book shouldn’t be counted since that wasn’t really a vacation expenditure (similarly I didn’t count the Harry Potter or Seinfeld DVDs that I bought with Garnier gift cards at Borders on the way up)

I think that next time we are going to try smaller vacations. I think a week is just too long with kids this young. Maybe instead of 1 1-week $1000 vacation we’ll try 2 3-day $500 vacations or something of the sort. Now we just have to decide where to go next…. Memphis? St. Louis? Atlanta?

We decided that Amy, Joel and Carolyn would stay back while Scott and I made the trek into downtown. We left around 9:30 and took the blue line to Grand, and the #65 Grand over to Michigan Avenue. So…. apparently Chicago has double-decker streets. I did not know that, and being the road-geek that I am, I would have expected to know that. A brief history on that – there are many double-decker (and a few triple-decker) streets in downtown Chicago. We sort of have one on the Brent Spence bridge here in Cincinnati, but here, southbound traffic goes on the top, and northbound on the bottom. In the streets in Chicago, the bottom layer is 2-way and the top layer is 2-way too. It’s quite odd. Apparently, in the 1850s the folks of Chicago decided that their streets were always muddy and such, so they raised them 5-7 feet above where they were to allow for proper sewers and drainage. The first double-decker street was Michigan Avenue in the 1910s. If you’re interested in more info, follow the link above…

Anyway, we wandered around downtown for awhile looking at the double-deckerness of it all, and then made a foray into the Lego Store. I wasn’t really impressed. I mean, they did have some pretty cool things, like a life-sized Darth Vader made out of Legos, but (at least my impression was that) it had a huge area for kids to play and experiment, and that just wasn’t the case. It had some small areas, but nothing too exciting. Scott did enjoy playing with some Thomas the Tank Engine trainset / lego pieces, but we didn’t do a whole lot there. We ate lunch at the mall-type area there, and then since we had some time to kill, took a tour on the “El” in the Loop. We did a circuit and then got on the Red Line going north to Wrigley Field. The train was VERY crowded – standing room only. I had to pull the old line of telling Scott “Sorry Scott there’s no room for you to sit; all the seats are taken.” A college kid heard me and offered her seat, but she was too far away for us to get to it. Eventually some folks got off and we got to sit.

Wrigley Field was cool. We almost missed the first part of the game because we got there a bit late, and the line for Will Call was long. I was a bit afraid that something was going to go wrong, but it didn’t, and we made it just in time. We had seats behind first base on the main level, underneath the upper deck (i.e. in the shade). Really good seats. Cubs spanked the Pirates, 5-1. Mark Prior threw a 2-hitter. There was some good excitement – 2 good plays at the plate, both outs (Neifi Perez trying to score from first on a double, and Derrek Lee trying to score from third on a wild pitch). Overall, Scott seemed pretty bored, but he was a trooper, and I have to say it was a very neat experience taking my son to a ballgame.

Bus from Wrigley was very crowded as well. Pulled the same trick and got us a seat. Scott fell asleep in my arms and slept most of the way. I was quite nervous about missing the Blue Line stop, but shouldn’t have been. We were up in the front, and as I was walking down to the train level, I saw a train coming in, so I busted in there (carrying a sleeping Scott) and we just made it on.

We decided to go out to eat, and so we stopped by Lou Malnati’s pizza, which is a big local chain. There was one right by our hotel, which we found to our dismay was just a carryout / delivery one. So we decided to just order one and I drove back and picked it up 30 minutes later. Kids didn’t seem to like it, but I thought it was good.