Chicago White Sox game & US Cellular Field

When evening came we went in search of the baseball stadium. We had bought a parking pass when we bought our tickets, and so we drove down there.

I had always heard that the area around that stadium was pretty frightening, and part of it was.  But there was also a nice residential area right near the stadium, too, with neat well kept little houses.

Our seats were very near the top of the stadium, and the views of downtown Chicago from the escalators going up were breath taking! We paused to take some pictures of the skyline.

The stadium was very tall. By the time we reached our seats (a few rows from the top) we felt we had been walking up a steep path in the Smoky Mountains. A guy from Ohio sitting near us kept making jokes about mountain climbing and needing oxygen!

The stadium was all high tech and glitz and gloss, and it lacked character and soul. It could have been any modern stadium in any city. There just wasn't anything particularly special or distinguished or fun in its design; it was very generic. You would think that with Chicago's rich architectural heritage they could have come up with something special. And it's not because the stadium is new - Comerica Park has plenty of character, and I have heard that the new Cleveland and Baltimore ball parks do, too.

The game itself was a fairly fun one to watch - Cleveland got far ahead early and the Sox made a valiant attempt to make a comeback in the bottom of the ninth inning ~ they made the score go from 10-2 to 10-8 before they lost. I can see why a team like that, which refuses to give up, won the championship last fall!

We must have been sitting in an unlucky section, as many of the Sox fans in our area of the stadium were loud mouthed and rude heavy drinkers. I am sure that this does not characterize the average Sox fan, but the ones sitting around us did somewhat mar our experience of the game. Luckily, there were a few Indians fans sitting next to us, with small children, and they were not drunkards, not rude, and not loud mouthed. So I am sure the game could have been much less enjoyable if not for the Ohioans beside us and the Iowans directly in front of us. And they were all shocked by the way the surrounding Sox fans were drinking, too. We're not talking a couple of beers to be sociable here - we are talking drinking to get drunk. At least when the Sox got far behind a lot of the worst ones went off to find bars and left the stadium.  

our first Chicago morning & the Blues Festival

Steven and I both woke up early that first morning. We watched the sun rising up over Lake Michigan together from the hotel room window. It was truly glorious! From an apartment, that would have probably been a million dollar view!

For breakfast we walked a couple of blocks to a classic Chicago Jewish deli/diner, called the Eleven City Diner. The food was very good, and we greatly enjoyed our breakfast.  They had this great French toast made with challah bread. Yummy!

Afterwards we walked up Michigan Avenue and did a bit of light shopping. We were actually looking for cheap tourist sweatshirts, as I had packed for mostly hot weather, and that first weekend was pretty chilly. Our destination was the northern end of Grant Park, where they were having the Chicago Blues Festival.

We sat near one of the little stages for a couple of hours and listened to some truly inspired blues.   While we were at one of the little stages, and in the middle of the day, the people playing were still recorded artists, and they were very very very good! We listened the longest to a singer named Shirley Johnson and her blues band. She was very  talented and her band was just great. We would have probably stayed longer, but it was a cool and windy weekend, and we wanted to go back to our room and get warm and rest a bit before heading out to the ball game...

 

the first night in Chicago

It is hard to believe that I am writing about a night that happened over a week ago! The time on our vacation flew by very quickly indeed!

We got out very late on our travel day. Dan and Bill worked most of the day; Steven and I spent most of the day cleaning in the house and getting everything ready to go. Bill took the dog to the kennel in his little truck and the dog jumped on him and they ended up in a ditch. Luckily, someone came along right away with a farm truck with a winch and pulled them out! Let's hear it for Good Samaritans!

Anyway, we got on the road in the evening. The drive went fairly smoothly, and we made it to Chicago in less than four hours, about 9PM local time.

Everyone was so tired we checked into our hotel (a new one to us, picked for its convenience to Grant Park and the museums, rather than our usual haunts in River North) and went pretty much straight to bed.

After being in bed for a little while, I started to hear booming sounds in the distance. I looked out the window and found fireworks over Lake Michigan! I could not get anyone else to wake up and watch them with me, but they were absolutely gorgeous!

    

the trip; a beginning

Well, I suppose I will start with a brief time line of the trip. I will later make entries expanding on some of the places we went and some of the things we did, all mixed in with regular entries of our daily lives.

Day One

driving to Chicago and settling in

Day Two

the Chicago Blues Festival

Chicago White Sox and US Cellular Field

Day Three

Field Museum and the King Tut Exhibit

Madison

Day Four

Taliesin

International Crane Foundation

Wisconsin Dells

Day Five

Wisconsin Dells

boat tour of the upper dells

romantic date

Day Six

Wisconsin Dells

duck tour of the lower dells

second date

Day Seven

returning to Chicago

Wrigleyville, the Cubby Bear Lounge, the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Stadium

Day Eight

Chicago shopping

the Blue Man Group

Irish pubs

third date

Day Nine

Father's Day

Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry; the frogs exhibit, and the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit

the return home

 

safely back

We got safely home yesterday, just missing drenching thunderstorms in Chicago and all across Indiana and Michigan. We kept finding water covered roads, but never quite caught up with the big, dark clouds on the eastern horizon.

It was a great trip, and I am trying to make up my mind how to best journal it - by day to day accounts, or in depth descriptions of the good parts, or by some combination of both of those.

I will try to make up my mind and get started when I get home from work tonight.

And, of course - my first day back at work, and they were short staffed and I had to start work early and put in some overtime..

What a drag.

my bags are packed and i'm ready to go...

Well, after another rough week we are nearly ready to leave on vacation. The bags are packed except for medicine and toiletries and a few odds and ends like the cell phone chargers. I have new memory cards for the digital cameras (mine is one gig - hee hee hee - it will hold hundreds of pictures even with my 4meg camera) and plenty of batteries. We all have enough clothes for eight days, plus at least once extra change each. Dan and I both have a nice outfit packed in case we get a chance to go to Pops for Champagne. And yes, I have all of the tickets! And directions to the hotels!

  <----Pops for Champagne

In the morning we have to wash any last minute dishes, take out the last bit of kitchen trash, and take the dog to the kennel. I even gave all of the plants a good soaking yesterday.

Wednesday broke my heart. It was the last time I will ever be able to work with John, one of the best pharmacists and nicest people I have ever known. He is transferring out to Las Vegas next week. His last day will be while I am gone.

Time for a shower now, and then a good night's sleep.

It should be a wonderful week!!!

graduation pictures

Here are a couple of pictures one of my sisters took of my older son after his high school graduation:

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j169/krobinettjones/billgraduation1.jpg

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j169/krobinettjones/billgraduation2.jpg