Chi-town: Does anyone actually like the south side?

After passing out at 10:30pm last night, Ryan and I woke up fairly early to start the day in Chicago. Our plan was to take the train down to the Chicago loop and then take the “El” to the north side to enjoy a cubs game. Downtown was incredible. We walked into the Sears tower and saw all of the Olympic flags hanging in preparation for the 2016 summer Olympics. In addition, Ryan and I both looked straight up and realized the Sears tower is indeed ginormous! Similar to my 5th grade field trip to the Twin towers, the line to go to the top was incredibly long so we opted not to do that. Instead we headed further into town and saw the Chicago Trade Center. This building was Wayne Tower in Batman Begins (see pictures below). We then walked to a small park where Picasso’s steel horse was. There was a steep iron base at the foot of the sculpture, perfect for sliding down! Ryan did choose to go with the more conservative method of sliding but none-the-less we both slid in style! (see pictures) After the horse, we continued on to Millennium Park. This is probably one of the cleanest and most entertaining public parks in America. In the middle of this park is a giant polished stainless steel bean! It has all sorts of convex and concave surfaces creating funny and wacky distortions of your reflection. Ryan looked the goofiest. After the park we headed to Wrigleyville for the Cubs game. Unfortunately, scalpers did not have three tickets or tickets that were reasonably priced so we ended up not getting into Wrigley. Instead we went to one of Sutton’s favorite Chicago pizza joints. Ryan and I can honestly say that for $5.00 we got one of the largest slices of pizza in America. It was truly Man vs. Food worthy. Once the game had finished up, we headed back to Highland Park where Sutton lives. He then took us to Michael Jordan’s house. Mr. Jordan has a massive “23” on the gate to his property! As we walked up to the gate, I had Jim Jones “BALLLLIN!” in my head so I convinced Ryan to throw up the jump shot with me as we took the picture. Now its back on the road tonight for Sioux City, IA. Driving tonight will give us an easier day to the Badlands National Park, where I will ride my bison!

First Night

Well, we arrived in Chicago at about 4:15pm Friday night (Good timing on our part) then it took us an hour and a half to drive through the city and arrive at the house where we were staying. We had pizza for lunch at Mackenzie's and pizza was on the menu for dinner at Sutton's. They were very accommodating and we ordered subs instead, thanks for that! After dinner we took a tour of the neighborhood which includes a house that was in the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". It was Cameron's house in the movie, the one where the Ferrari was parked and they ended up kicking it and it fell into the ravine behind the house. Then we went to the beach on Lake Michigan and skipped rocks like pros. Check out the pictures! We went to a bar for a couple beers and went to bed early (since we had already been awake for nineteen hours, twelve of which was driving).


We have already seen 28 state license plates. We were so excited when a mustang sped past us with a Hawaii license plate. Jacob said "Dude, if we can get Hawaii we have a chance to see all 50!"

Opening Day

Hello Hello (followed by the Warner wave hello-Ryan)! So far the travels have been smooth going. We started at 4:50am in thick fog but made great time to Vermilion, OH. In our short-lived 6 hours of driving we have already completed mad-libs, part of a book on tape and of course shared plenty of laughs. We even discussed Ryan's "air-conditioned house" (inside joke for the family). In addition, Ryan and I will be recording all of the different license plates we see. So far we have 10. Anyways, Vermilion is a small boating community with beautiful harbors and interesting stores. In fact, there is a store that sells only clothing made from alpaca wool....We made it to Mackenzie's house where we ate lunch (Thanks!) and caught up with the Williams. They made a fair number of attempts to convince Ryan and I to stay the night in Cleveland. Apparently "CLEVELAND ROCKS!"-Drew Carey.

Needless to say, we did not give in and are on our way to Chicago to meet up with Sutton. Ryan is now driving and is having some difficulty coping with the GPS navigation system....Ryan speaks to the GPS-"Hold on, I have to wait for the light." haha More to Come later!

PS. It's starting to get really flat