Saturday, August 05, 2006
Chicagoland
Time to get caught up on some posting. We've been busy having fun and
haven't had a chance to blog about our activities.
Our campground outside Chicago wasn't much to speak of. No surprise for an
urban location. Interesting crowd there, and they liked to sing along to
country music late into the night!
On Thursday morning, we rented a car to drive into Chicago. Luckily, I
mentioned to the person at Enterprise who picked me up that we were going to
the Cubs game, which was scheduled to start at 1:20 PM. He told me that he
had gone to the game the day before which was rained out. That made
Thursday's game a doubleheader, starting at 12 Noon. We figured out that in
fact it was a single-admission doubleheader. You don't see that at Fenway.
Our ticket was now good for two games!
Denise, however, would have none of that. We would only go to the 12 Noon
game, but that meant we had to hustle out the door to get there. There is
some major highway construction in Chicago, and our campground was south of
the City (in Mokena, for your Chicagoans). Wrigley Field is on the North
Side of town. YahooMaps said 36 miles, but it took us 90 minutes to get
there as we tried to avoid the construction. We missed the first few
batters, and it was already 2-0 Diamondbacks by the time we sat down.
Our tickets were great, but the game wasn't. The Cubs got killed, 10-2. We
left in the 8th inning. It rained a bit during the game, but not enough to
delay the game or get us too wet. Wrigley Field was pretty cool, with the
buildings across the street topped with bleachers to hold additional fans.
It was even more of an old-time park than Fenway, with no video screen to be
seen anywhere.
After we left the game, we went to the Aquarium, which was awesome. It was
huge, with beautiful exhibits on the Ocean, Lizards, and much more. It's on
the Museum Campus in Downtown Chicago, along Lake Michigan. Very pretty
spot, and I wish we had more time to explore there.
We tried to go to Twin Anchors for dinner (thanks for the suggestion,
Angelo), but the traffic was too much to bear in front of dinner and our
long drive home. We gave up and headed back for a quick dinner near the
campground. We knew we had to get up early the next day for the longest
drive of our trip.
