We woke up day 16 of our journey just outside of Chicago. My husband described our hotel as the “largest and busiest Hampton Inn” he had ever seen. The breakfast area was huge and a large crowd of Sunday morning diners descended for waffles, eggs and oatmeal.

After breakfast, we hit the road and traveled in to Chicago. Driving Chicago’s highways can get expensive quickly. There are numerous toll stops and we were constantly digging for change. The tolls were of varying amounts ranging from $0.90 to over $3! By the time we got into downtown Chicago we had paid over $16 in tolls, which seemed astronomical at the time.

To add insult to injury, check out the fee for garage parking in downtown Chicago.

After this cash hemorrhage, we were not in the best mood but most of us were still excited to be in Chicago. After we exited the garage, we were in Millennium Park. Millennium Park is (thankfully free to visit) enormous and beautiful with expertly landscaped and manicured gardens, interesting sculptures and, best of all on a hot summer day, fountains!

There were terrific views of the Chicago skyline from the park.

One of the biggest draws in Millennium Park is a sculpture by Anish Kapoor called “Cloud Gate,” but commonly known to everyone as “The Bean.”  It is extremely shiny and mirrors every object around, including a large number of tourists taking self-portraits.

Another huge draw in Millennium Park, particularly on a hot July day is the Crown Fountain by artist Jaume Plensa. Wikipedia indicates that this fountain has an interactive video component where it appears that water is spouting from people’s mouths on a video screen on the fountain’s surface. However, when we were visiting there were signs out that the fountain was under repair. All we could tell was that it was a regular water fountain but every kid for miles around was thoroughly enjoying it, including our own.

After our fountain visit, we took a few photos in the park and then sat down in a quiet corner of the park on some cement steps leading to some shallow channels of water about 4 inches deep. These water features are designed to allow you to dip your feet in but every tourist takes it one step further and starts wading in the water. We were guilty of this too and were quickly advised by a park volunteer who seemed to appear out of nowhere:

“Hey, you can dip your feet in the water but you can’t stand up.”

“Oh, sorry!” we apologized and pulled the children in to sit back down.

“No worries,” the cheerful man replied and went on his way.

As we were sitting relaxing and soaking our feet, other tourists also began wading in the water. We didn’t have to tell them not to because suddenly a singing security guard appeared!

“No standing in the waaaaater . . . . No wading in the waaaaaater . . . No boating in the waaaaaaater . . . No jet skis in the waaaaaaater,” he sang, with the lyrics getting increasingly silly as he went on.

Chicago has to win the award for friendliest rule enforcement. In DC (and Fredericksburg) the most common disciplinary phrase for this situation would be either a stern, “Ma’am, don’t stand in the water!” or “Sit down!” It seemed like Chicagoans were really trying to preserve a friendly, fun peaceful space.

After our water adventures, I wanted to explore The Art Institute of Chicago nearby. My 4-year old was a bit soggy but quickly dried off enough to be suitable for a brief tour. The Art Institute has a truly impressive collection of extraordinarily famous works of art, including Georges Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece, A Sunday on La Grand Jatte, which seemed extremely appropriate for our Sunday visit to Millennium Park.

The Art Institute is enormous and could occupy a visitor for days. Fortunately, the Art Institute provides a 1-hour tour outline in its standard brochure, highlighting about 16 works of art that the museum considers its finest. With young children in tow, we knew our clock was ticking fast so we followed the 1 hour route, which took us very quickly through just about every exhibit the museum had to offer from Asian pottery to African masks, to Impressionist paintings to modern works. My daughters loved that it was basically an art scavenger hunt. About the time we hit Grant Wood’s American Gothic halfway through our tour, my son decided to exercise his vocal cords and was promptly evicted from Gallery 263!

Fortunately, my son calmed down enough that we could finish our tour, although his lung capacity surfaced again as we were trying to get lunch in the rooftop café and we decided not to press our luck further. We made our way to the car and drove on into Indiana.

There was some beautiful farmland scenery.

Finally, we arrived in downtown Indianapolis. Since we had so much success in Des Moines and Omaha walking around public parks to get the wiggles out while getting a quick flavor of the city we were in, we continued the trend at the Indiana War Memorial.

Before we started making these cross-country trips, I had no idea how many cities and towns have huge monuments honoring veterans from World Wars I and II. When you see them, it really drives home what a tremendously sad and difficult time period that was and how so many people must have needed an outlet for their grief. The War Memorial is enormous and has large stone steps, stone lions, obelisks and brass orbs. It provides an incredible view of the city.

As we drove out of Indianapolis, we hit our first major traffic jam of the trip. We were stuck on the highway for roughly an hour, just sitting in the car. Despite all the advances in technology and communication we have, it is still really hard to get information about local traffic. After hunting websites and Twitter, I finally came up with a vague Tweet indicating “crash clean up.”

I wish the traffic news would at least entertain us with a few juicy details while we are waiting. What kind of vehicles were involved? Was anyone badly hurt? Have the police/fire/EMS arrived? How long are we going to be sitting here? Alas, “crash clean up” was the best we could do.

We finally drove past the accident . . . a U-Haul and an SUV had some sort of terrible collision.

We lost quite a bit of time waiting for the accident to clear. By the time we reached the Ohio border, it was getting dark.

It was another fast food dinner since all the good restaurants were closed. We were excited that this was the last night on the road, the last time we had to unpack and repack our suitcases and that we were very near home.

Continue reading: Day 17 – Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Home!