Chicago and Alternate Plans

Chicago…the plan been to stop in Chicago, but I had not thought about what we would do there until we were driving there. The internet is a wonderful thing, but it is full of so much information that you can get bogged down with it all. I was trying to figure out what we were up for and where to stay accordingly. It took a lot of work to decide what to do and then find a hotel. Finding a hotel means checking Expedia and Hotwire and comparing it to where you want to go. It has taken hours for us to figure out where we are sleeping at night. Kind of a pain, really. But, as Dave was getting frustrated with the horrible traffic getting into the city around rush hour, I eventually picked a 4-star hotel for $81 on hotwire. It was a weird price, so I was nervous. But, the hotel was truly a 4-star with a great location. It was a spectacular deal!

With the traffic, we got in later than we had hoped. So, we planned on just going to dinner. We walked to a pizza place that urbanspoon had recommended because you have to have Chicago-style pizza when in Chicago. The place was nice and had the Bulls basketball game on to entertain us. It took a really long time for our dinner (apparently they had lost our pizza ticket), so they gave us some cheesy garlic bread, our pizza for free, and a free cookie pizza dessert. It was one of those days, too, where the kids were pretty well-behaved (maybe that was the 2 beers that Dave and I had each had), so we didn’t mind the wait so much. And, we liked the final bill. Afterwards, around 10 PM now, we figured we would go check out the famous “bean” in the Millennium Park. It was quite fun for the kids. They had a really good time running around it, “teleporting” from one side to the other. We were pretty tired, though, by the time we made it back to the hotel. Thankfully, the hotel did not offer breakfast, so we slept in awhile.

The next morning, we woke up to severe thunderstorms and crazy rain. I was glad that the car was under cover at the hotel. We decided to head to the science museum. I wish we had had a couple days to go to that place. It was enormous and full of so many things. The kids had a good time there for a few hours, but we wanted to make it to Ohio that night for a reasonable bedtime, so we had to leave before seeing it all.

Driving to Ohio, I was rechecking the weather for the next day, our amusement park day. The weather report was grim – severe thunderstorms with downpours, near 100% they said. We had decided that we were going to stay at the resorts at Cedar Point to get discounted tickets and an early entrance to the park. But, it was a little expensive and silly if we weren’t going to the park the next day. And, what would we do the next day if it indeed stormed all day. After searching Expedia, I found good rates at Great Wolf Lodge. We went back and forth on this. We had to commit to our plans for the next day. If we stayed at Great Wolf Lodge, we were swimming, even if the weather ended up nice. If we stayed at the other hotel, we would miss out on swimming if the weather was bad. Finally, we sided with the weatherman. Since we checked in around 11 (so much for a reasonable bedtime), Dave was able to negotiate a very nice rate for the big suite.

The next morning, it was overcast but not raining. It was sprinkling as I checked out of the hotel and ran a few errands, but then the clouds went away. The sun came out a little, and I was starting to get angry. We were giving up a good day at park when only the few crazies would have been there. Even though the kids were enjoying the waterpark, I was worried that Friday would still have bad weather and/or crowds. It did eventually thunderstorm around 6 for a short while. But, we had committed and were hoping for a good day on Friday.

While I was running the errands, I was thinking about what a crazy trip this was - like an endless party.  Here, we had planned on an expensive day at Cedar Point, but that couldn't happen.  Rather than just hanging out at the hotel and doing homework or some other mundane tasks, we go to Great Wolf Lodge, a real treat at any other time.