Chicago

We woke up this morning, fairly early, to a beautiful day (thank God!), which was soon marred by lots of confusion. We had decided last night before going to bed that trying to get to Mount Rushmore in a day (over 15 hours of driving!) was not going to happen. So we found and booked a hotel midway (Minnesota). Well, turns out Andrea is working all day on Thursday (which is when we would have gotten to Colorado because we pushed everything back a day). I am really looking forward to seeing her, so I didn't want to have that not happen.

So we start seeing what we can do. We thought maybe we could cancel our reservation, not spent time in Chicago, and go straight to Mt. Rushmore like we had originally planned. So we start looking for hotels, and lo and behold, the cheapest hotel in that area is $200/night. Whoa. So I keep searching, and I find one that is $89 and we immediately decided to go for it. Mike called and canceled the hotel in MN and I start programming Chloe, only to discover that this hotel is actually in Michigan, 4.5 ours back the way we came!!!! We called the hotel right away and they claimed they couldn't do anything about it, so we had to call Orbitz. And call we did. Mike was able to convince them we deserved a refund; it was easier than we thought it would be. So then we have a decision to make. We decided that it would be better to spend the day in Chicago, go to the hotel in MN, and then go straight to CO and skip Mt. Rushmore. Between the timing being off and the crazy added expense that we weren't counting on, it made sense not to go there. So we called back the originally booked hotel and told them we still needed the room! Luckily, she hadn't gotten around to canceling it yet and it was all good.

At this point, much time has passed, so we quickly gather our things and check out. Then, we headed into the city of Chicago to spend the day.

The Navy Pier

A friend of mine who used to live in Chicago suggested we ought to go to the Navy Pier, and so we did. It was a wonderful choice!

The whole place was so cute. There was a mini-mall with tons of stores, an indoor beautiful garden with fountains, a mini-amusement park, and tons of shops, restaurants, and kiosks all along the pier.

By the time we got there it was lunch time, so we looked at a few of the places to eat and decided on Charlie's Ale House. We were able to eat outside, so that was nice, and the food was decent. After that, we began to walk.

As we wandered in and out of the pier (with Mike taking millions of pictures along the way!) we came across a Stained Glass Museum. Very unique; very cool. So we took our time walking around and checking out the beautiful stained glass. We have pictures of tons of the pieces.

Strangely enough, there were many references to Massachusetts. This is just one of them. =)

Lake Michigan

After that we had almost reached the end of the pier, so we went back outside to the end and spent some time with Lake Michigan before heading back.

Largest Ferris Wheel in the World

Once we got back to the main area, we decided that before we left, we wanted to go on the Ferris Wheel. It is the largest Ferris Wheel in the world, and it never stops. It moves very slowly (it takes 7 minutes to go through a full cycle) and so when it comes down to the landing, the people on it get out and you get in (all while it is still moving!). The views were incredible and it was really nice.

Us on the Ferris Wheel

After that we decided we ought to get on our way. But first, we wanted to stop at a bookstore, because I'm ridiculous and didn't bring anything to read. Because of this, we were able to drive around the city for a little bit before heading out.

There was traffic when we left, so we had to sit in that for a while. After a few hours, we stopped for dinner at the World Buffet (both Chinese and American foods) in Wisconsin. It was ok. We started up again a bit later than we would have liked though, and hadn't gotten as far as we had wanted to earlier because of the traffic, so our arrival time to the hotel in MN was actually 3am! At which point, we calculated the route to Colorado, only to realize that we still had 13 hours of driving. In all the confusion in the morning, we failed to notice that the hotel we had booked was midway point between Chicago and Mt. Rushmore, not Colorado, so we ended up driving quite a ways in the wrong direction. =\ So we're taking a nap (3 hours) and then heading back out.

written by

prettyblueroses on August 5, 2008 from Chicago, United States

from the travel blog: Mike & Heather's Cross-Country Adventure

tagged Chicago, Driving and Chaos

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