Chicagoland

Navy Pier, Chicago


Oprah's interview - She's the dot of red under the bright lights above the motorhome (like I said, lousy zoom :-)


It's been a little while since I've posted. We are still in the Chicago area. We spent the week of Sept 7 - 12 in downtown Chicago. It wasn't as fun of a visit as I had hoped, mainly because the city seemed to overwhelm the sensibilities of both Kenna & Erika.

However, we did go to the Field Museum, twice to the Museum of Science & Industry (the second time so Mark & the boys could see the Harry Potter exhibit which had stuff from the HP movies). We also went to Navy Pier, which was pretty quiet since it was after Labor Day & biked along Lakeshore Drive on the bikepath that runs along Lake Michigan.

The one unplanned surprise was we saw Oprah Winfrey as she was preparing for the opening of her tv show. They had blocked off all of Michigan Avenue for a free public concert, and had 3 blocks of standing room blocked off for people to attend. They were allowing people into the blocked off area from noon to 5. I wanted to see the chaos of the event, and so the kids & I walked along the sidewalk on Michigan Avenue around 11:45 - 12:30. The kids were thrilled that Vitamin Water was giving away free bottles, and Blake suggested we go past the booth several times, but sadly I wouldn't go along with that plan.

Just past the Vitamin Water display and before we got to where we spotted Oprah, Erika had the mother of all tantrums. They had music piped into the street to entertain the people waiting for the show to begin, and as soon as Erika heard the music, she insisted on getting out of her stroller to dance. After dancing for 20 minutes, I tried to persuade her to get back into the stroller, and apparently, that was a completely unreasonable expectation in Erika's realm.

Finally, I managed to get her back into the stroller, although she wouldn't allow me to buckle her seatbelt. We passed the main stage, which was just before where the Fox River (I think?) runs into Lake Michigan. As we crossed the bridge, I noticed a open-top red double decker bus parked on the side of the road with all sorts of audio/visual equipment. I looked up and saw the bright stage lights focused on Oprah giving what I assumed was her interview or opening for the performance. I tried to get my camera out of my purse while simultaneously trying to get Erika back into the stroller (again!) when a security guy verbally pushed me along and prevented a close up of Oprah. However, we stopped at the end of the bridge and looked on as we still had a clear shot of Oprah. I would have some really good pictures if the telephoto lens worked well on my camera, but I dropped my camera 2 weeks into our trip, and my pictures have gone from really fabulous to so-so. I had to point Oprah out to Kenna as apparently Kenna had never really seen her before.

From Saturday until now, we have been at Pheasant Run Resort, about an hour west of Chicago, attending 2 back-to-back conferences. The second one just ended today. We managed to celebrate Kyle's birthday yesterday and will celebrate Blake's tomorrow. Tomorrow night Mark flies to Fargo for another business conference and will return back to Chicago Tuesday night. The kids & I will stay at the Resort until Wednesday. Since we were scheduled in Chicago for so long, we opted to take the RV into the shop and get several items taken care of under warranty. We finally got it back today after being without it nearly 2 weeks, only to have the automatic step break when Mark stepped on it tonight, and the back-up camera tv screen not open up. The screen is particularly important because it allows us to see our blind spots when changing lanes and the rear when backing up, so it looks like our home-on-wheels may have to go back into the shop on Monday (I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't have to).

We will be leaving Wednesday to head towards our next 2 appointments: Albany, NY on Wed, Sept 30th and somewhere in Connecticut on Friday, October 2nd.