Monday, September 7, 2009







On Saturday, we left Indianapolis after breakfast and headed north for Chicago. Just past Purdue University on I-65, we noticed some large windmills in a field, so we pulled off of the interstate and found hundreds of these wind turbines extending for miles and miles. Unfortunately, it was an unusually calm day and none of them were operating at the time. But what an impressive sight and hopefully a start on supplementing our dependency on oil.
We reached Chicago in early afternoon and the traffic was absolutely horrible. Thank God we don't live in a big city! We checked into the Westin, which was very luxurious, but everything seemed to be a la carte. There are extra charges for everything; parking, internet access, even local and 800 phone calls. Seems a bit odd for such an nice, expensive hotel.
After lunch, we took the train toward downtown, but stopped in Wicker Park to meet the Kincaids' younger son, Wes. He showed us around his place and then took us downtown to the Chicago Jazz Fest and fireworks. At one time while walking along Michigan Avenue, Wes looked around and the 4 of us were just piddling around in the crowd behind him. He threatened to go get one of those retractable dog tethers for us if we didn't keep up. We stopped at Bennigan's for dinner and Wes thought Sheryl was trying to fix him up with one of the "cute" waitresses (much to his chagrin). We really had fun walking around Chicago, but were extremely tired when we got home around midnight.
Was glad to see on ESPN that the Herd beat Southern Illinois 31-28. GO HERD!
Sunday morning we took the CTA to pick up our travel guide, Wes, and before heading downtown, took turns riding his Yamaha scooter. It was fun and Mike even talked about getting one for local trips around Leland. We'll see! We then had lunch at a small sidewalk sandwich shop near Wes' apartment. It had the most extensive, diverse sandwich menu that I have ever seen. Connie and I ordered a turkey meatloaf sandwich, as did Wes. When our food arrived, our sandwich had a piece of meatloaf over an inch thick, but Wes' was made up of what looked like small crumbs. After we all laughed about it for a few minutes, he told our waiter, and received a much larger portion which pleased him very much.
The remainder of the day was spent touring downtown Chicago and the Navy Pier area. By the time we went to dinner, Wes admitted to us that we were wearing him out, both physically and mentally. He said it was like babysitting four kids. Imagine that!

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like Wes did me proud as a Chicago tour guide. Hope he took you to see "the bean". Enjoy your trip.
    Kay

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