Chicago Trip 08 Oct 2008

Dustin and I went on a random day trip to visit the 2nd largest city in the country: Chicago. We left Indianapolis around 7am our time and got to the Museum of Science and Industry around 10:00 or so. We stopped and got gas at our IGA for $3.19, got two Starbuck's iced coffees, two slim jims and headed off. We ran through some cool places, such as Wolf Lake... did you know there really is a Wolf Lake and it is huge?! Everyone always asked where the lake was... I found it! It is in NW Indiana! I believe the lake is bigger than the village of Wolf Lake, Indiana. Below are some pictures that we took while we were there. By the way, even though there are many oil refineries in the Chicago area... the pice for a gallon of gas changed twice while we were there. It began at $3.99 a gallon to $4.09 a gallon.

Here Dustin is posing in front of the U-505 only surviving German submarine U-boat from World War II. We paid extra to take the tour inside the boat and it was amazing. Everything was still original from when we captured the boat. So very exciting and eerie at the same time.


Here is one of the torpeedoes that was left on the boat once captured. We had to take the picture from above because it was so long.

This is the top of the U-505 standing next to it on the floor.


Here I am next to the coper propeller on the aft of the boat.




Just to get an idea of how big the engines were in this U-505, this is just one of the pistons.

Moving on in the museum, I made Dustin lie on the tracks because he was being annoying.

Now he's just being serious because it was hilarious.



The two conductors in our life :)


A picture Dustin took of a train.


We are avid N-scale train builders and this is an HO-Scale of Seattle, Washinton (See the Space Needle in the back left?).

Here is a close up just so you can see the true to life this is. Amazing!


After spending about two hours in the Museum of Science and Industry we were starving. Remember, we only had a slim jim and an iced coffee for breakfast. So we asked the locals where we should eat to get an authentic Chicago Deep-Dish pizza. They sent us to this place. It took 40 minutes for the pizza to cook. We bought a medium and we could only eat about one piece each! Delicious!!


The parking guy at Gino's East allowed us to park there for the whole day so we decided to walk to Hershey's. Here I am posing with a 50 serving pice of chocolate. We didn't buy any chocolate; instead we bought flavored twizzlers. I also got a frozen mocha when I had to dump out before going to the Hancock building.

The view 96 stories high in the Hancock building. We went to the lounge because it was cheaper to go to the lounge and have a drink to look at the view than going to the observation deck and looking out that way. This was a better view than most get in the Sears tower!

Here I am with my Chardonney and the skyline of Chicago.

When we got done with our drinks and pictures we decided to go see the "shiny ball thing." The bartender was laughing and told us it was known as the "bean." He said it was only a mile south from the Hancock tower so we decide to walk it. On the way Dustin took some of these pictures below on the Magnificant Mile. I do have to say that I did trip over Dustin's foot and rolled my left ankle and my Hershey's bag when flying and a lady helped me. It was pretty funny but so much pain!

Of course if it has to do with radio, Dustin has to take a picture.


More pretty sky line.



Here we are---sweaty and excited to be at the Bean! (aka shiny ball thing.)




Here is the pic of the bean from a distance.


This trip really was a great one. We will definitely be going back at some point when we have more than just a day.