Day 47 - Bright lights, traffic and a big wheel. Must be a city, but not just any city, this is Warren's hometown!

Well we timed our entry into Chicago wrong.  Who knew it would take that long to get across Wisconsin and Illinois?  It was a shock after driving for mile upon mile through farms to arrive in the Chicago area at 4:00.  The next 10 miles to our hotel took a mere 1.5 hours but we did it at street level and got to see some nice neighborhoods in the western edges of the metropolis.  Our funky "boutique" hotel is right downtown so we parked next door and will walk about while here.

The river

No city is complete with a big wheel these days.  I guess Boston and NY are no longer cities

We started walking, just wandering about, as we regrettably did no research on the city before showing up.  Given the number of things to do here we are a bit at a loss as to which to choose in our limited time.  We did get to see the Navy Pier from a distance, the river and Lake Michigan up close, a number of striking buildings,  the el over the Loop and the Millenium and Waterfront Parks so we did pretty well.  Having worked up an appetite we went out for an authentic Chicago deep dish pizza which was tasty as was the local IPA Larry had.  Since deep dish pizza takes a while to make apparently we did get to watch a bit of the Olympic track and field events and even some Greco-Roman wrestling, a variety of the sport that is like watching skinny Suma wrestlers.  Not a great way to support keeping wrestling in the Olympics.

A giant funhouse mirror

A view of us in the mirror

Lake Michigan where the power boats and the sailboats are segregated in different areas of the harbor.  The powerboats get slips while the sailboats are on moorings.

We suspect that the presidential race is still going on as we did see a Clinton ad stuffed amongst the car ads during the Olympic coverage.  I suppose she has to pay for ads on TV because she doesn't have her name on tall buildings like Trump does.  It is one thing to have the name of a popular ex-President but a whole different thing to have your name on the tallest concrete structure in the world as the Trump Tower here in Chicago claims it is and unlike most Trump claims this one is verifiably true.

Tomorrow we are looking forward to exploring the city for a full day.

Regular Features

Statistics Corner

States involved: We added Illinois to our long list of visited states

Charging 

La Crosse WI 30 minutes

Madison WI - 45 minutes including lunch.  Michelle really liked her salad

Rockford IL- 15 minutes because we needed a bathroom break and even though we had plenty of juice if you are stopping anyway why not grab some free electricity.

Song of the Day: Chicago by Frank Sinatra.   What else could you pick?

Coolest Car of the day: The problem with some cool cars is that they are fast and going the other way so a picture is out of the question.  That was true of the Acura NSX on I-90 today.

Church of the day: This is a lousy picture of a church we came near finally but could see for about a half hour while fighting through Chicago traffic.

Coolest Thing of the Day – Larry - Seeing in person the areas I would drive recklessly along in Midtown Madness which is an old driving game we had on the computer.  The graphics were great for that time but lacking by current standards and the amount of traffic in the game is nowhere near as much as in real life. 

  

Coolest Thing of the Day – Michelle - Lunch and dinner!  Loved the food today.