Day Twelve, It's Raining, It's Pooring!

I hate to disappoint all my devoted blog fans, but I'm going to keep this blog short for a change. This road trip stuff is a lot more tiring than I thought it would be. Who knew sitting in a car for a few hours each day and stopping to see a few cool things along the way would be so exhausting? Not me, that's for sure. It's totally worth it, I never doubt that, but sometimes I just wish it was a little easier and required a little less effort on my part, like I need a moving sidewalk or something for some of these things. Maybe that's just laziness on my part, but don't worry, I'm following through with the plan and still hope to make it to the east coast sometime next week, though I have yet to determine in which state that might be - I like to keep things a little mysterious!

So today was a full day as usual. It was the last leg of driving before reaching Chicago, but we had a few interesting things to see on the way. First, I really thought it would be cool to go see the real Field of Dreams, the actual film location that they used in the movie. I had read about it while planning this trip and added it to my list of things to see. Of course, I couldn't have predicted the major storm we'd have to drive through in order to make it happen. It was a little scary there for a bit.

But we weren't going to drive by and miss such a cool place just because of a little rain! Baseball players play in the rain, so this was just a more authentic experience than most visitors get! I had a lot of fun dodging the puddles and getting a little rain-soaked to run the bases like a little kid, even managing to improvise by hitting a rock with my umbrella, which amazingly enough led to an inside the park homerun, go figure! It even stopped raining and cleared up a bit for a few last pictures before we left, so I was very glad we didn't let a little rain cause us to miss out on yet another unique road trip experience! Another cool sight we found on the map just off the highway before arriving in Chicago was the first and original McDonald's restaurant built in 1955. Unfortunately, the rain put us a bit behind schedule so we were lating in getting to the city and the McDonald's historical site keeps very short hours, closing at 2:30pm, so we didn't get to go inside, but we saw it, we were there, and we got some cool pictures to add to the ever-growing Snapfish collection!
Finally, we arrived in downtown Chicago just in time for rush hour traffic, which would have been good since it allowed me plenty of time to take pictures except it was still raining pretty hard to most of the pictures didn't even come out very well, which was a bummer. And the rain made me a bit grumpy as I came to see Chicago, a lot of which requires being outside and probably aren't fun activities in the rain, such as a baseball game at Wrigley field tomorrow, Navy Pier, an architectural boat tour, wandering around Milennium Park, etc. But my dad is being very understanding about my moods and is doing a great job of keeping my spirits high and reminding me why I'm taking this journey. Sometimes, the journey doesn't go the way I'd like and I have to go with the flow and make the most of the situation because I might not ever be in these places again.

Perhaps a little positive thinking does go a long way sometimes, or perhaps it was just a little more of that Shannon Irish luck, but just as we were getting ready to venture out into the rain to find some food, the sky cleared and the sun even came out! It was such a nice surprise! Our hotel, the Allerton, an older building that has been remodeled and is very nice now, isn't far from the lake (Lake Michigan, for those who aren't familiar with the area), so we decided to make the most of the brief reprieve from the rainy weather and walk to Navy Pier to check off at least one of the things I wanted to do in Chicago. Our timing was perfect yet again as we were able to walk the full length of the fairly long pier in windy, but rain-free conditions. Once we got to the end of the pier we looked north and couldn't believe how dark, almost black the sky had gotten once again. Another storm was clearly headed our way so we snapped a few pictures of the scary sky because it was so amazing we wanted to be able to remember it as we don't see that color sky very often in sunny California and then immediately started heading back toward the beginning of the pier. We made it about 1/3 of the way back when the skies opened and drenched us before we could run for the shelter of the interior buildings on the pier. We quickly detoured to a souvenier shop for my trademark shot glass and then took the free trolley back toward our hotel. We stopped at a TGI Friday's for dinner - I know, not very Chicago-esque but all the cool places on the pier had hour waits or longer and we were wet and hungry and just wanted a good meal and I think we made the right choice. Plus, I got a great, yummy drink called the Ultimate June Bug, which hit the spot after this long, wet day!

Tomorrow, rain or shine, we're headed to a Chicago Cubs baseball game at Wrigley field. I hope that even if the game gets rained out that they'll let us in just so I can go check out the historic stadium! I'm keeping my fingers crossed, please do the same for me!

P.S. I forgot about this picture, but wanted to include it in the blog because it's a cool way of showing how far I've come in these two long/short weeks! It's incredible! And actually, the sign is somewhat inaccurate for my trip because I've actually traveled over 3,000 miles total because of the wierd, somewhat zig-zag route I've taken so far, and there's still quite a bit of miles to cover before I reach the Atlantic! Amazing!