Chicago - June 16-22, 2004
Since McLean is going to be in Costa Rica doing volunteer work for all of July, catching our yearly Dave Matthews Band concert anywhere near Virginia was out of the question. So we decided to make a whole trip of it, heading first to Chicago and then catching the concert in Indianapolis on the way home.
We elected to drive because of the Indy leg and let me tell you how awesome it is driving 12 straight hours. . . . definitely give it a try when you get the chance. Yep, mountains flatten out to rolling hills and finally corn fields, corn fields, corn fields . . . you get the idea.
The first day in the city we hit up Navy Pier and a bunch of shops, then headed down to the cool planetarium. It was at this point that we figured out that Virginia in June doesn't equal Chicago in June. (Translation: Virginia 80 degrees, Chicago 65 degrees and wiiiiiindy)
The first night there things began to get interesting, especially for McLean. See, I had a little surprise (actually a few) up my sleeve.
I first took McLean to dinner atop the Hancock building, a cool restaurant 95 stories up. Chowing down steak and potatoes while overlooking the city and lake was quite an experience.
Following dinner, instead of walking back to the hotel, I led McLean to a busy street corner where a horse and carriage patiently waited for our arrival. We climbed on in and soon we were off, touring city blocks from the comfort of the carriage. The horse was kind enough not to do any business while we were aboard graciously allowing us to whiff only taxi exhaust and not Seabiscuit byproduct.
Near the lake, the carriage came to an unscheduled (ahem) stop and there just so happened to be a nice gazebo in a lakeside park. Yep, so it was there that I proposed to McLean. After her initial surprise, shock and happiness, she finally remembered to say yes and much planning and sneaking around on my part finally paid off.
It was hard to beat the excitement of our first night, but we followed that up with our day to Wrigley Field. Only, things didn't go as I had hoped. Since the game had sold out months ago, I was hoping to pick up a couple of tickets outside the stadium. But I didn't know that would cost me $300 for a pair. Needless to say I love my Cubs but I wasn't about to drop some dude $300 just because he happens to live two blocks from the box office. I was very very disappointed but now I have a reason to go back to the Windy City.
On our last two days in the city, we hit up the Lincoln Park Zoo and also ate some genuine Chicago style deep-dish pizza. Yum! We also took a drive around my old neighborhood checking out the houses I lived in way back in the day.
After 5 days in the city it was time to head off to Indy for the DMB concert. Hey, at least this broke up the 12 hour drive back! We discovered that Indiana doesn't use daylight savings and as a result stood outside the gates for an hour along with other early arriving fans. But hey, at least we weren't an hour late.
The concert totally rocked and we were glad to have pavilion seats as the rains poured down on the lawn crowd (though I think they loved it).
The day following the concert we finished the 8 hour drive back to Virginia after a fun but exhausting trip. How come after vacationing I always feel the need to sleep for a week? Anyway, that about does it for the Chicago trip. We had a great time and can't wait to go back (and next time catch a Cubs game!)
