A Windy City Adventure...

Originally published on August 9, 2008

A Windy City adventure

The summer I was 12 going on 13, my parents sent my sister and me from Colorado to Chicago to visit our great aunt and uncle in Evanston, followed by a visit with our aunt and her family at their summer cottage in Lower Michigan.
It was a great trip. Our great aunt and uncle worked as volunteers at the Field Museum, and allowed my sister and I to explore both the museum and the Shedd Aquarium on our own. My sister and I shopped downtown Evanston by ourselves, and probably bought a few pounds of bulk candy during our stay. My mother’s cousin took us to a Lake Michigan beach and then out for deep dish pizza and a visit to Sear’s Tower.
While viewing downtown Chicago from the 103rd floor, we used the phone card our parents had given us to call home and ask “Guess where we are?”
This became a bit of a running family joke, and my father pulled the same stunt on a business trip to Los Angeles, calling from a Dodgers game.

Now that I’m a parent, I can’t fathom turning my 12-year-old son loose to run around a Chicago museum or suburb by himself. He and I had a chance to experience Chicago last weekend when we visited my good friend Lynn, who was my college roommate and is one of my son’s godmothers.
On the drive down we stopped at a toll oasis and I invested in an I-pass, which made the rest of the drive a lot easier.
Lynn and her family recently moved to a new house. Their new home was nearly as simple to find as the old one, and it was nice to spend time with them. Their daughter is nearly 3, and it was lovely to get to know her better once she warmed up to us.
They treated us to deep dish pizza and accompanied us to downtown Chicago. We took the El and visited Chinatown for some shopping and lunch. My son was brave and tried dim sum, and I tried a fruit smoothie with tapioca pearls.
After Chinatown, we rode the El again and went to Sears Tower. The view was just as incredible as it was more than 20 years ago, and I had to call my parents and sister to say “Guess where we are?”