a visit to Evanston

Well, we got home from Illinois a few minutes ago. It was a pretty good couple of days.

We got on the road in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday. Dan was not feeling well, and we got off to a pretty slow start, made slower for having to go get Dan's blood pressure pills refilled since he was out and had forgotten to. We also went out to a very late breakfast.

But the drive went smoothly. It is the first time in my life I have driven through Chicago, or even by Chicago on my way further west and did not run into a parking lot on the freeways of northern Indiana. The roads were clear and fine, and the weather was perfect, and we made record time up to Evanston.

In fact, a couple of cool things happened on the way. The first was seeing a very strange sight in the sky in western Michigan, right near the Lake. A cloud of an interesting shape had turned into a prism in the sky. It must have had a lot of ice crystals and the sun was shining on it just right, or perhaps there was a reflection of some sort from Lake Michigan. The cloud was glowing with all of the colors of the rainbow. It was so beautiful.

The other interesting thing was driving right by the football stadium in Chicago right in the middle of da Bears playing in their playoff game. We were listening to the game on the radio, and just as we were passing by the stadium, da Bears did something right, and you could see all of the fans standing up and getting wild.

We checked into the hotel in Evanston, then walked a couple of blocks for pizza. It was very good pizza, and one of the ingredients we got on it was fresh garlic, which is probably my favorite pizza topping of all time. Yum!

This morning we slept in late then went out for bagels and juice for breakfast. We then walked around Northwestern University for awhile. When Bill's tours and interviews got close in time, Stevie and I split off. Dan and Bill stayed at Northwestern, and Steven and I went down to Chicago for the afternoon on the train.

We rode a CTA train down to the Loop, where we got off in the Theater District, and got lunch at a hog dog place that had been recommended to us.  I am not a hot dog eater, but I munched on fries while Steven greatly enjoyed his hot dogs.

It was such a glorious and sunny winter day we then made the mistake of walking all of the way to the Field Museum. About the time we got to Grant Park, Steven's knee was really bothering him, but by then we were so close it seemed silly to take a taxi the rest of the way...

We rested a lot on benches during the walk, but that was no hardship on such a sunny day! And Chicago Harbor and Lake Michigan are always lovely!

At the Field Museum we looked at a lot of the stuffed and mounted animals, including the man-eating lions. But the main reason we went there was to see a special exhibit with all sorts of artifacts from Pompeii.

It was a very interesting exhibit, though it also made me sad. Some of the bodies they found had run to the beaches and boat docks hoping to be rescued. They took their jewelry and coins and even their silverware with them. And, of course, the rescue did not come. It made me think of hurricane Katrina...

The artifacts included casts of the dead, and even a dog that had been killed. There were furnishings (even a safe, and a bathtub), A doctor had been killed, and they had his instruments and the cases for the instruments. There were pieces of art, and copies of wall murals. There was a lot of jewelry. I was surprised at the frequency of snakes in the rings and bracelets. I associate snakes with various goddess cults in Greece, but not so much in Rome.

After the museum closed, Dan and Bill came to get us in the Jeep, and we drove on home. It sounds as if they had a great day touring Northwestern. Bill even got a chance to talk with the dean of the college of engineering, and she asked him to email her this week so she could talk to the admissions office about him. I take that as a good sign? He was pretty upbeat about Northwestern, but wants to wait to see what happens with all of his scholarship offers, and to see if he is admitted to Ball State's Architecture School before he makes up his mind about anything.

If he does end up going to Northwestern, I foresee myself taking a lot of train rides in the future...its definitely the easiest way to get up there by myself. And I would probably be by myself for most of the trips with Steven being in high school next year and doing two sports like his brother did...

The drive home was the second drive through northern Indiana in my life where the freeways did not resemble a parking lot. The drive was quick and went well, and we followed a huge full moon all of the way home.