Visiting Family & Friends in Chicago

The most exciting stop on our way east this year was seeing Michael’s Aunt Mary & Uncle Roger and my college friend, Erin, in Chicago! We got to see everyone twice which made it a very wonderful week.

We arrived in downtown Chicago on a Saturday afternoon and had a 24-hour reservation to stay in a truck marshalling lot for the McCormick Convention Center. This was probably the craziest place we’ve ever towed and parked the camper but it sure was convenient after we got there.

We were about 3 miles south of where we wanted to walk around so we took an Uber up to Millenium Park, where The Bean was unfortunately under construction. We continued north to walk across the river and along the Magnificent Mile shopping area of Michigan Ave.

Our destination was having Chicago deep-dish pizza with Mary and Roger at Lou Malnati’s! They like to travel as much as we do so it was great to hear about where they’ve been this year and discuss upcoming plans.

The next morning we biked up the Lakefront trail to Navy Pier where we found a spot to leave our bikes and walk around until it was late enough to justify an Italian beef sandwich from Buonos.

That afternoon we moved ~1/2 hour outside the city over to Camp Bullfrog Lake, a Cook County Forest Preserve in Willow Springs.

It was a pretty normal October weather week in Chicago. We saw the first snow of the season, had a couple of days with highs in the 40s, and we can count the number of hours of sunshine on one hand. But, I loved it. Michael, not so much, and he hibernated most of the week.

Mary and Roger came out to visit us at the park one evening (with beer and Halloween candy!) and we had dinner with Erin twice. It had been almost 10 years to the day since we’d seen Erin for a Notre Dame football weekend, which is just ridiculously too long. Since our home has wheels, I can guarantee it won’t be another 10 until the next.

On the first Saturday of November, we headed south to spend a week in Lexington, Kentucky.