Day 29 - Chicago!

The drive today was longer than we thought. We had breakfast just off the highway. While trying to find a Denny's we noticed this diner attached to a Flying J truck stop, so we had a quick bite to eat.

It wasn't half-bad, in spite of the brash colours.

We felt welcome! The pancakes were good and the coffee was hot. 

The drive to Chicago was mainly uneventful. A few stops for bathroom breaks meant Gord was in the car for a pretty long time, and I had to pull out all the tricks in my book to keep him from going Vesuvius on us. 

We hit rain in Illionois. Nice.

And tool booths. We took an express toll route to save time, and if we hadn't driven into one of the largest cities in North America we likely would have saved lots of time. 

In 'a tent' with Gord. You put a towel over Gord's head and get under with him? He's sold!

Before we knew it we were in the city, and that great skyline looked great.

We passed the exit for Harpo; T got excited.

Crawling through downtown traffic, having been away from home for a month, we found a friend.

And then at 3:00 local time we were there. Our home for the night was The Inn of Chicago, right downtown on the mag mile. Nice!

With Gord reaching his limit I jumped out of the car and ran in to check-in while T handle the ornery little man. At the front desk I got good news and bad news. The bad news was that our room wasn't yet ready. It would be in 45 mins or so. The good news was that we'd been bumped up into a suite because they had overbooked. Sweet suite! So, with the bags stowed at the front desk and the car left with Valet, we headed out.

The wriggles building is all angles and all impressive.

Gord likes water of all kind, including the Chicago River. 

In an hour we had oriented ourselves to downtown and went back to the room to check in. We didn't have a long time in the Windy City, so we moved quickly. A change of clothes and we headed out for dinner.

Only one real option of food with one night in town - deep dish. Gino's East is our fav spot, not sure if it's the best, but it's an iconic place for T and I, and it never disappoints. Does Gord look disappointed?

After the pizza we made a quick stop for something sweet. Ever have Chicago style popcorn? Don't do it, not if you like your active lifestyle. 

This popcorn place was packed! Gord is such a ham.

A super aspect to Chicago are the public parks/spaces right downtown. Here are a few of the fam clowning around in Millennium park.

Careful.

The infamous bean.

Here's some art I can get behind.

And then we turned a corner and stumbled upon this, the Grant Park orchestra and chorus playing a free concert in the park! How can you not love this place?!

Everyone was relaxing to the music...

even the Canadians.

After a while at the park we thought we'd move on to see if we could see more of our fav US city before bed. We headed to the water, got lost, walked through some great neighbourhoods and headed home. It was a great day in paradise, but we had a big night tomorrow and a date with the border patrol, so we hit the hay.

I'll admit that Chicago has some sentimental value for us - it was the first trip T and i went on together so many years ago and we have a lot of memories here, but it was just as nice to go with Gord. Go to Chicago, we've only been in the summer, but I've heard it's great anytime of year. Go! What a you waiting for?

TOTAL FUEL FILL UPS: 11

DAILY WILDLIFE: dogs, pigeons, swallows

Day 28 - Breakfast Bar, Dixie Quick's and Lotsa Corn

Alright, so here's where we break down the wall between writer and reader, it's time to get real. We're home now, we've been home for a few days, and we're all tired. We've decided to start sleep training now: I go back to work in a month (more soldiers for the war), Gord's sleep schedule is all messed up anyways, we have some events later this month that will require (or at least be WAY better) if we can give him to a Grandparent and have them put him down to sleep. So i'm not going to write log blog posts anymore. The trip home had two real highlights, Chicago (read up later) and the wedding of our friends. So I'll give you the Cole's notes (or the Cliff notes, if you prefer).

So we slept ok last night. A big king and a dry roof would seem like reasonable expectations of a god night sleep, but then there's a baby. Gord refused to go down last night, and that means nobody (especially Theresa) sleeps. We think we 'missed our window', but our clearly tired little man fought with everything he had. And he had a lot it seems. In the end T won the row and we all woke up around 7:45 with plenty of time to spare for continental breakfast! Now I remember staying at many hotels as a growing boy, with parents who liked to be away from home more than anything you see the insides of lot of hotels, but they never had no continental breakfast like this (vacation, remember)! The same staples were there: bagels, yogurt, pastries (donuts and cinnamon buns usually), muffins, cereal (hot and a few choices of cold) and some non-descript fruit. And of course juice, milk, coffee and tea. Not bad, but nothing to get too excited for. But now, these 21st C hotels, these Septmber 12th inns, these new world order refuges, have upped their game. The self-serve waffle bar was again present. As well as the hard-boiled eggs, and this special place had scrambled eggs as well. The coffee was good (if scant), the waffles were outstanding, the yogurt was Greek. We had a great start to our day. 

Make your own waffle station is a game changer at continental breakfasts around the world. Write to your member of parliament and write another one to Bay Street, let North America's hospitality industry hear this demand. 

After breakfast we headed East on, you guessed it, I-80. What can I say? We drove through he rest of Nebraska, past the capital (Lincoln) and into the largest city, Omaha. Across the Missouri R and into Iowa. You wouldn't know it by the landscape, but we were in our 8th state and 13th state/province.

We had a line on lunch in Council Bluffs so we got off our asphalt friend and found our way to the bar-crawl where Dixie Quick's Public House.

What a great place! Attached to the RNG gallery the atmosphere was easy and fun at Dixie Quick's. their menu is on an old school black board, so people gather to pick their food. 

A funky spot to eat the day away.

The menu changes daily because they do their shopping every day. Food blog, food bog. Food blog food blog? Anyway, it was great.

On a diet? I had the chilaquiles 

 

After lunch we stopped by the gallery to say hi to a friend, and then strapped the boy into the carrier to see if we could find something sweet and cold before getting back in the car. 

Posing with a friend.

We found a few ice cream joints on the steamy streets of Council Bluffs, but we ended up going with more familiar fare as we three split a shiver from TCBY. After that we made a shirt stop at the bank and hit the road.

T thought this was hilarious, but I didn't want to speak to a teller.

Once on the road we set our sails for Des Moines, the capital city of this state and our home for the evening. So we drove, through Iowa. Here are some pics in case you want to know what you missed.

It's pretty flat, and pretty green most places.

Everything is big in Iowa. The trucks, the windmill pieces, the sodas, the people (those last two could be related).

Another interesting peculiarity in Iowa was the sheer number of crop seeders! There were little planes everywhere, spraying the fields with something healthful I'm sure.

Ultimately we found our way to Des Moines. Once we found or hotel and got settled in our room we went for dinner at the sushi place across the street.

From this picture you can glean a lot about our states of mind, and you can see some resemblance. The good news is that Gord loves sushi and noodles (shocker).

After dinner we had a little time for some shoulder rides, a bath and then a bed. We were almost home, but we had a busy drive into Chicago tomorrow. We needed our beauty rest.

TOTAL FUEL FILL UPS: 10

DAILY WILDLIFE: dogs, cows, horses, pigeons

Day 27 - Making Lots of Ground, and Changing Plans

So this one will be short, because, well, we're travelling through Wyoming and Nebraska, and even this cute kid can't do much for these places. We woke up in a backyard, er, KOA and had breakfast. Oatmeal and tea for me, yogurt/granola and free KOA coffee for T (by now it should go without saying that Gord eats anything and everything he can get, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week).

Waking up in the ugly Wyoming KOA, the view wasn't as bad in the pretty morning sun.

Without the hills in the background this could be any backyard in 'name your Ontario suburb'.

We hit the road and had a serious talk. I'd been thinking about our Chicago visit for a few days (since we left San Fran, really) - as planned, it would be our 3rd longest day of the trip, driving over 750 km from Council Buffs, IA all the way to the Windy City. We love Chicago, and we weren't giving ourselves much time there. I had an idea, a change of plans that would see us driving past our planned stop tonight (Happy Jack's Petrol Bar and Campground in Brule NB, seriously, could i make that up?) and onto somewhere closer to Chicago, likely a hotel. This would give us less driving tomorrow (or more, leaving us even closer to Chi-town). T was on board in theory but we decided to see what the day gave us.

So we drove through Why-oming. The landscape got a little more interesting closer to the capital, Chyenne, with grass making an appearance and some interesting rocks popping up.

These would be rocks anywhere else, but in Wyoming they are tourist attractions. 

We passed the (a) Lincoln memorial, and even saw some trees outside of Rawlins, but we didn't stop.

 

Doesn't it look like he's peeing on the great emancipator?

A great man, but not a looker.

When you see a tree in Wyoming you take notice.

So we drove on and on. We stopped in Laramie, WY for another Sub lunch and went to the local Wal-Mart so T could get a knitting needle and we could replenish the baby wipes and hand sanitizer. Then we were back in the car. We made it to Nebraska by about 2:00 and came up to Happy Jack's at about 4:00, right about the time the severe weather alert came on the radio. That made the decision easy. Since we left home I was a bit nervous about driving through tornado alley in the summer storm season, especially with my noun family and nylon shelter. We made the decision right there to head for North Platte and find a hotel.

My impression of what awaited us at Happy Jack's.

Gord had been having a pretty rough day teeth wise (another reason it to be in a tent) and T world really hard to get him to fall asleep. She was successful, just before I realized we needed diesel. I stopped, he woke up (angry), and I got back in the back seat to give my lovely wife a break from our toothy son. 

Finally, at about 5:30 we arrived at North Platte. Remembering our experience in California getting an unplanned hotel e headed for the first place we saw, a Holiday Inn Express just off the freeway. They had an Executive Suite and a Jr. Suite left. We said we'd check around town to see what was available (there were at least 8 other chain hotels in sight) and the nice lady working the desk told us that the Ramada across the street was just renovated and had cheap rates.

They did. Half if what the Holiday Inn was asking, and they had free wifi, a free breakfast bar, and a room with a king bed (Theresa's new obsession). It was perfect. I cooked our planned camp dinner on a picnic table outside the room (my 2nd parking lot kitchen of the trip, the first was Thunder Bay), we gave the little man a bath and were off to dream land.

Our dry and secure abode for the night. No more camping for the trip. :(

As the thunder cracked and the rain poured down I knew we'd made the right decision. 

TOTAL FUEL FILL UPS: 9

DAILY WILDLIFE: song birds, crows, vultures, dogs - come on people, we sent most of our day in Wyoming and West Nebraska, we were lucky to see mammals in the Wal-mart!

Day 26 - A Three State Day

So we didn't freeze - in fact, we think the native Nevadans (?) were a little nervous for cool temperatures, maybe remembering their first time feeling the temp drop so dramatically, and they simply wanted to warn the foreigners, especially ones with a baby. However, these foreigners felt more relief than anything. Coffee was sipped, oatmeal shovelled (seriously, this kid eats like a horse. You think he's cute? Great, he's coming to your house tonight. We wanted to get on the road before it gt too hot and we had that road to descend, so we got serious and got everything in the car.

About that descent. Again, it was breath taking, literally. There were times when I forgot to breathe, and while I would have loved to get some good pics for ya'll, but I know you value Gord's company too much. Here's the best I could do.

You can sort of make out the road way down there, and that's the flat part you can see about 10,000 ft below.

Oh yeah, and there is wildlife up in the mountains too. We were coming around a tight bend when I screeched to a halt (in truth I was likely travelling about 10 km/h) with a 'wow'. Theresa, a lady nervous about the road thought we were going off a cliff and was protecting Gord. Finally I got her to look up and she saw these two. 

Two jet black cows on this high pass surprised us. We crept past and made sure both parties had as much room as possible in such a dramatic locale.

By 9:09 we'd filled up on ice and headed for Utah on our old friend I-80. It didn't take too long, or at least it didn't feel that long. 

Entering Gord's 5th state. Life elevated!

Of course these borders are all political and human made, but the landscape did undergo a fairly drastic change close to the border. You can see a bit of it under the sign above, but it stretched on to the horizon.

Growing up a Motorsport fan I always knew what Bonneville was. So getting this close to the 'speedway' where all of those land speed records were set and broken, I had to get a pic. It looked like there was some action at the 'track' but it was too far away and we had a long way to go.

Craig Breedlove made a career smashing land speed records at Bonnevliie in cool 'jet-cars' like this one. Rad!

Craig at speed at Bonneville in the '60s.

I thought about honouring Craig and his brothers and sisters in speed by opening it up a little and seeing what it's Turbo Diesel could do, the road was flat and straight, but I had a baby (and a strong wife) in the car so I thought better of it. Glad I did, as I passed a few members of the Utah Highway Patrol a few minutes later, I guess I'm not the only one to think like that.

We'd been in a virtual dessert since we passed Reno and drove away from Tahoe, so coming upon a large marina and the Great Salt Lake was a bit of a surprise. 

It is big, but not a drop to drink.

Here's the Mormon Temple in Sat Lake City, the idea of it freaked us out and we drove past SLC like Rick Grimes escaping Atlanta.

And then, like a Phoenix, rising from Arizona, the mountains returned.

The mountains were back after we left behind Salt Lake City and the salt flats, but these ones had colour. The beautiful red rock was set off by the green brush. 

By is time we were hungry and Gord needed a change. We got through the Salt Lake City suburbs and realized we we entering another dead zone, so we stopped at the first town with 'Food' on the Exit sign. That town was Coalville. Yup, Coalville.

What can I say? We had a sub and some veg and dip, and decided to walk through town a ways, just to kee Gord our of the car seat a little longer. Coalville has 15-16 stores, including a Bunny Club and a general store, but o where to buy a magazine! But the ladies in the post office loved Gord (shocking) and T liked the benches made of skis. It was hard to imagine skiing here, given that we were searching out shade like a vampire at a beach, but Park City is close by and in the winter the shushers take over. 

Standing by the Coal sculpture. Really I was just trying to keep Gord away from the scorching sun.

Old timey downtown Coalville. It may have been rush hour. (Oh we're such hip city mice!)

We got back in the car and again headed East on I-80. And then before we knew it we were in our 3rd state of the day. Leaving Utah and entering Wyoming was as exciting as it sounded. The first thing I noticed was the wind. I noticed it physically, in that I had to hold the wheel more firmly, but the wind was also reflected in the landscape.

It was nice to see the armies of windmills stretched across the horizon, and they were busy with the gales whipping across the plane.

There were also wind/snow fences all over the place. Again, it was hard to picture snow in this 40 C desert, but it snows here come winter and the wind blows that snow everywhere.

Maybe it's because we'd been in the desert for so long, but we found Wyoming pretty boring, in fact we wanted to call it why-oming, as in, 'why come here?' But day 3 of a desert drive may have biased us.

Finally we arrived in Rocksprings and we found our way to the local KOA. I was very surprised to find out where it was - about 50 ft. from the interstate, in a gravel parking lot, and right behind a petrol refinery. Hmmm. Thankfully T is uber positive on the trip (and in general) so we checked in and found some perks right away. For one, they had fresh and free cookies ready for us, and two, it had a pool! We set up camp and got Gord into his wet suit (more sun protection) ASAP so we could hit the water. As usual, he loved it. After that we had dinner and tried to get the man to bed - it took some laps of the park and a patient Mom, but he was down before it was dark.

Hmmm, want to pitch a tent here? Ummm, ok.

TOTAL FUEL FILL UPS: 8

DAILY WILDLIFE: cows, birds, an antelope - seriously, I didn't even know they were here, but I saw one drinking from a puddle on the side of the interstate.