Sunday, September 7, 2008

Arriving in Chicago

We had hoped to spend more time coming down the shoreline of Michigan, but with the forecast of the remnants of Hurricane Gustav coming up this way, we decided to shorten our plans and cross Lake Michigan on Tuesday, a predicted calm day. Evidently, others decided the same thing—early Tuesday morning, nine Looper boats came out of the harbor of Saint Joseph at the same time! Other boats were coming out as well—fishermen and sailboats—and with the sun just coming over the horizon, it was a pretty picture indeed.

We had an easy 50 mile crossing—the winds were low and the waves 1-2 feet—we couldn’t ask for a better morning to be on the lake and out-of-sight of land for several hours. We arrived in downtown Chicago at DuSable Marina mid-afternoon on a hot, hot day. It was September 2nd, and both Louis and I couldn’t remember one single day this summer that we’ve been that hot! What made it so uncomfortable was there was no wind—and we thought we were in the “Windy City”!

Once we had secured the boat and checked in, we joined “C-Life” and “Wanderin’ L & M” and headed towards the Visitor’s Center for maps and brochures of the area. We passed Millennium Park, which is just two blocks from our marina, and quickly found the old library where all the information was. So much to see and do here and over 16,000 restaurants—how/what will we choose?! Decisions, decisions. But we all know the weather makes our decisions for us.

We all decided to try and do at least: an architectural boat-tour of downtown Chicago, eat deep dish “Chicago” style pizza, do a Segway tour of downtown, see a few museums, do a tour of Wrigley Field if we can’t go to a game, see the play “the Jersey Boys”, go to Navy Pier, and go to the fabulous restaurant, Fogo De Chao. We have five days here—we ought to be able to squeeze it all in! With 2-4 inches of rain and high winds predicted for Thursday, we may lose one day.

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