Day 12 (June 29th) – Chicago, Illinois

Today we went to downtown Chicago. We wanted to avoid traffic as much as possible, so this meant that we would only have a few hours to see some sights.

We made into downtown without incident which was a nice surprise. We decided to head down towards Millennium Park and Navy Pier. As we got there, they were holding a Taste of Chicago Event in the park. I thought this was a great thing, since we could go there and eat. The problem was that it made parking difficult and the traffic getting around the park very difficult. We did find some parking and headed out. Now, I wanted to get some eats at the Taste of Chicago, and I was the only one. Everyone seemed to ignore me, or wasn’t ready to eat. We walked to the shore of Lake Michigan and towards Navy Pier. When we got to the pier, everyone got hungry. I was not amused by this. We could have had better eats and at a lower cost at the Taste of Chicago. After eating, we walked the pier which is a lot like the Santa Monica Pier.

The next stop was the Sears Tower. The name has now been changed to the Willis Tower. I wonder if this is going to stick. Everyone in the United States knows the building as the Sears Tower. I guess if you purchase naming rights you can change the name, but that doesn’t mean the name will change for everyone else. To get to the Sears Tower, we decided to take the water taxi, which went from the Navy Pier to the Sears Tower via the Chicago River. This was the favorite part of the day for Lisa. She enjoyed the view of the buildings and skyline that you get from the river.

We went up to the observation deck on the Sears Tower, scratch that Willis Tower. Before you get to ride the evaluator up to the top, you have to watch a little film about the tower. We went into the theater and sat down on one of the bench seats. The theater isn’t really all that big and doesn’t look like a theater. I made a joke about hearing how fast this elevator moves. Samantha thought I was serious and said this is a really big elevator. I told her that it was a joke. The real elevator takes you to the top in a minute. The tower is 1,450 tall. You ears pop as you go up. The view at the top wasn’t all that great. The weather all day long has been cloudy and on the way over to the tower it was drizzling.

Once we got back down to ground level, we walked over to Millennium Park and walked along Michigan Avenue. There were your usual street entertainers and lots of people walking around and enjoying themselves in the park. Since we wanted to leave before rush hour really got started, we headed to the car and headed back to the campground by 3:30 PM.

I did want to head over to the United Center and take a picture next to the Michael Jordon statue with a Kobe Bryant jersey. There is a certain someone who loves Jordon and hates Kobe. I thought it would have been funny to have the picture taken, but we ran out of time. I did see a billboard for the Michael Jordon IMAX film. I guess people still love Jordon here in Chicago.

We drove a total of 116 miles to day. We have driven a total of 3741 miles for the entire trip. We purchased $38 dollars worth of gas today.