Day three, Chicago

Thursday July 30, 2015

                Oh look! We’ve been really busy. We got up shortly before 8 this morning. We ate breakfast and got ready to go. Today we spent the day in Chicago. It took about an hour and a half to get to the city. I saw an advertisement that said “Oh look” and that became the day’s catch phrase. We drove around for a while, Chicago traffic wasn’t really our friend. Mom and Dad bought doughnuts for us and they were really good.

                The first place we went was the Museum of Science and Industry. For some reason when we got to the Museum of Science and Industry the side doors on the van wouldn't shut.  They weren't lined  up.  Mom was a bit worried about the situation.  How could we drive lots of miles if we couldn't shut the doors?  Dad looked at it and figured out a bolt had come out.  Thankfully we got it fixed so the doors can shut again.  The Museum was lots of fun. Before we went in we picked buddies. Dallin was my buddy.There were lots of cool things in the museum. We spent most of the day there. My top four areas were the Science of Weather, the You Experience, the Fairy Castle, and the Mirror Maze. The Science of Weather had a tesla coil that created lightning about every half hour. There were also wind chambers with 80mph winds. That was fun.
            The You Experience had a game where two people put on headbands that recorded brain waves and whichever was most relaxed moved a ball away from themselves and toward the other person. The one who was most relaxed won. David beat me, but it was close the ball moved back and forth for  a while.
            We didn’t spend a lot of time at the fairy castle, but it was amazing. It was a super detailed miniature castle. It took up the whole room with at least three levels and lots of rooms. It was a great castle.
         The mirror maze was really fun and disorienting. You could see people who were really somewhere else, around the corner or farther. Dallin kept trying to run through it and a couple of times I lost track of him, but never for too long.

                We also had tickets for 2 shows at the museum. The first was called Journey to Space and was shown on the domed ceiling. It was about space exploration and advancements and people going to Mars. It was interesting. The second was a tour thingy about coal mines. We road down for a while in an elevator and we saw some of the equipment used in the mines.

                We also saw a free, live show that lasted about 15 minutes. It was called America’s Got Bubbles. There were three acts: a duo who danced with bubbles, a Texan who made Texas sized bubbles (everything’s bigger in Texas), and some clowns that put a volunteer from the audience in a bubble. I liked the Texan the best; I thought he was the most impressive. But they based the winner on the level of applause at the end and the person-in-a-bubble group won. 

                We were in the museum for a long time and we just kind of skipped lunch. We left around 4ish. When we got out to the van we had an impromptu picnic in the parking garage. We had sandwiches and cheese tortillas and chips and those packages of mini cookies. Then we piled back in a started heading to the Navy Pier for a boat tour.

                It wasn’t that far, but it took us at least an hour to get there. Chicago was not really our friend as far as driving goes. We got stuck in traffic in front of the Fields Museum and there was a big group, like a tour group or something, and I think the poor guide was trying to get taxis for all of them. When we got close to the Pier we stopped in a parking garage. It was dim and pretty dirty, you know a typical parking garage, but when we got outside you could see that the outside of the building was really shiny and looked fancy.

                We walked about 4 blocks to Navy Pier. The Pier was busy and we weren’t sure exactly where the boat was. We were just about to ask a security guy when Dad saw the Shoreline Tours sign. We had bought our tickets for the boat online so we just had to verify them. We were about half an hour early, so had a bathroom stop and then walked about halfway down the pier and back. We passed the Shakespeare Theater; it was playing the Little Mermaid. There was a stained glass museum, a Ferris wheel , and a kid’s maze on the pier. 

               At about 5:45 we went back to the boat (our tour was at 6). The tour lasted about 40 minutes. It was interesting; mostly about the architecture of the Chicago skyline. We practically played musical benches on the boat. At first Julia, Emma, and I were on the upper deck and everyone else was on the lower deck. Then Dallin and Lydia came up to join us, and shortly thereafter everyone else did too. Then we moved from the front of the boat to the back; and Dallin and I moved across the aisle.

                After the tour we went back to the van and started heading back. We stopped for dinner and most of us went to Subway. MaryAnne, Lydia, and Dad went to McDonald’s instead. We used a Subway gift card we won from Summer Reading. 

                We drove the rest of the way back to Yolanda’s house. Emma, Julia, Matthew, and I played a great game called Imagine Iff… You wrote all the players names around the edge of the board. Then you move a token around the edge to pick one of the names. You get a card and use the player’s name to fill the blank. The card would be something like Imagine Iff… _______ _ was a holiday. Which one would he/she be? Then it lists 6 options. Each player picks and answer and the players that pick the most popular answer get to move forward. It was lots of fun! We played it twice. By then it was about 11 and we all went to bed.  

Chicago July 29, 2015 on PhotoPeach