Road Trip Day Two- Chicago Part I

We left Madison at 11 am on the dot and headed to Chicago on Wednesday, August 14th.  M had never been to Chicago before and I hadn't been there since 2003.  This was my sixth time there but I got more out of this trip than any other time I've been there.

With tolls, a quick bathroom stop, long-term road construction and Chicago traffic, we arrived at our hotel at 2:20 pm, which was in downtown, two and a half blocks from the Magnificent Mile.

Some of the album covers in one of the elevators while riding up to our 8th floor room.

I booked this room on Travelzoo.  It was a king suite measuring 404 square feet.  It was a very fun hotel room.  

Living room:

Bedroom: 

Bathroom: 

This crazy guy sculpture hangs outside the window.  He even has friends above and below him.

View of the city from our room (the windows were kind of dirty):

Once we got settled in, we ventured out on foot to see what the city had to offer.  We didn't have any real destination in mind but once we hit Michigan Avenue we decided to continue to Navy Pier.

We walked around a little before deciding to do the Architecture Boat Cruise.  We hopped in the boat on the Chicago River that runs through the city and learned about many of the buildings that make up the Chicago skyline.  I would highly recommend this tour.

After the one hour tour, we walked some more around Navy Pier and then we ate dinner at Harry Caray's Tavern before heading out to another cruise, the sunset skyline tour.

The weather was a perfect cloudless day and a little cooler than normal August weather.  During the day it good get pretty warm with all the walking you're doing in the sun but once the sun started to go down, it got chilly so I was concerned with getting cold out on the lake.  I didn't have a jacket or anything and didn't even bring long sleeves for the whole trip.  M kept me warm while we were waiting on the boat and for some reason when we got on the lake, I wasn't as cold.  The sunset skyline tours lasts 45 minutes versus the 30 minute tours during the rest of the day. 

We walked back to our hotel where I changed into a dress and we went back out again on foot, this time headed to the John Hancock Center, about 7 blocks away.  It's currently the 7th tallest building in the United States.  Jerry Springer currently lives on the 91st floor and Chris Farley died there in his condo on the 60th floor in 1997. 

I read that you can pay $18 to go to the Observatory on the 94th floor or you can go to the 96th floor to The Signature Lounge and buy a drink for several dollars less and 2 more floors.  We chose the latter.  We had to wait on the 1st floor while they allowed people from the 96th floor to leave in the elevators.  They said they needed 400 people to leave before we would be let up into the elevators.  The wait took 20-30 minutes but it was worth it.  We got seated right at the window facing west and ordered our drinks and took in the spectacular view.  I saw a shooting star up there and it was crazy.  It was like it burned out right at eye level.   

We left a little after midnight and tried to get pizza walking around close our hotel.  We found a place that was open but they need 45 minutes to cook the pizza so we were out of luck.  They sent us to another place that was open until 4 am that serves pizza. That place was called Bijan's and they don't serve pizza.  We settled for a steak quesadilla and mac 'n cheese instead.  We walked back to the hotel to call it quits for the night.  We had a fun-filled first day in Chicago and needed some sleep to do it again the next day. 

Road Trip Day One- Madison

M and I left work on Tuesday, August 12th, went home, packed up the car and headed east to Madison, Wisconsin for the first leg of our road trip that we'd be on for the next 6 days.  We took my car since I'm the one that has the new car now and M's been doing most of the long-distance driving for the last 7 years.

We left at exactly 6 pm for the 259 mile drive ahead of us to our hotel.  We stopped off quickly to eat in Eau Claire and got back on the road.  We played the license plate game while we were in the car and was able to check off a bunch of states.  Did you know there's an app for that?

We pulled into our hotel at exactly 10:13 pm, (my number haunt) and checked in.  We quickly decided to venture back out and check out Madison a little bit.  I had been to Madison a couple of times before, once when I was 16 and the other when I was 22-23 but I don't really remember it.

We parked by the capitol and walked to Great Dane Brewing Company.  We had a couple of appetizers and shared some beer.  I had a Door County Cherry Ale that was pretty decent before heading back to the hotel and getting ready for the 2nd day of our road trip.

Creepy

River Ride

It's been a couple of years since we have had time to squeeze in our "annual" canoe trip down the St. Croix River but we fit it in our schedule on Saturday, August 10th.

The weather was slight overcast with temps in the low to mid 70's and it was perfect, not too hot, not too cold.  The clouds did get clear later in the afternoon and it did get pretty hot then with the sun shining and reflecting directly on our silver canoe.

This canoe ride is a 17 mile trip and we make sure it takes us all day.  We left around 11:30 am and got back in around 6:30 pm which is pretty early for us.  We stopped for a picnic lunch at our normal resting spot just past Osceola, which is close half way through the trip I believe.

The river was deep in places and super shallow in many spots as well.  The water looked pretty clean from what I could tell.

As we were paddling down the river, I mentioned something about us being Lewis and Clark, which we kept up and revising it and we decided, yep, we were Lewis and Clark, just not the duo you normally think of. We were Jerry Lewis and Clark Griswold.  We thought it was pretty funny.

Our watermelon picnic toast

Vikings Preseason Game #1

Friday, August 9th was the first Vikings game in the last season at the dome.  They played the Houston Texans in their first preseason game and lost 27-13.  As you can see in the picture below, the team was quite large at that time with many people since getting cut.

The game wasn't too exciting, as most preseason games aren't but it was exciting to get back into the football season again.  I don't have any fantasy football leagues this year.  It would have been my 10th year playing but I don't enjoy it as much as I used to so I'll just be watching games for no other reason than the pure enjoyment of football.

I didn't take any pictures at this game and the over-saturated ones below are from M's phone.  I can't bring in a real purse anymore due to the new league bag/purse policy so I probably won't have my real camera with anymore.  Grrr....