We had many adventures on our trip to Chicago. We got on the train in Detroit at 6:15 pm, Monday night. The train was supposed to leave at 5:45 but the conductors were stuck in Pontiac so we had to wait for them to drive down to Detroit. This should have been my first clue to just get in the car and drive. My brilliant plan for the trip was that Alison would eat some dinner, read some books and then crash for the night and I would watch lots of Gilmore Girls. Of course none of that happened. Alison wouldn't sleep and we didn't arrive in Chicago until 12:30 am (2 hours past when we were supposed to). So we didn't get to bed until 1 am, which is 2 am to us! I did however enjoy seeing the city at night and found riding through western Michigan to be absolutely beautiful.
Tuesday morning we slept in and after lunch we drove to the historic town of Long Grove. The brochure said they had a confectionery and you could sample lots of chocolate. What could be better than lots of chocolate? The town was cute and fun to walk around, but this was the confectionery we were so excited about seeing. It was a little house that sold a couple of truffles. So, here are the girls at the confectionery. The buildings were not stroller friendly so we mainly walked around and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Alison had the most fun pushing her stroller around on the bumpy brick pavement. Sorry, again the video is sideways...someday I'll learn.
We thought it would be fun to eat lunch at the Cafe that had a beautiful deck over looking a little stream and water mill. Beth and I checked out the menu but decided it was too expensive since we had already technically had lunch. As we were walking away I commented that it smelled really strongly of flowers and then I looked down at Alison to find yellow petals sticking out of her mouth. She had eaten a flower while we were looking at the menu. I panicked and started scraping petals out of her mouth. Beth just stood there laughing. Not so helpful, but I knew if a nurse was laughing it must be okay. Our final stop was at the popcorn store to get some kettle corn and a drink.Later that evening we decided to go to the Botanic Garden. Conveniently the Metra is right behind Beth's apartment so we just jumped on and headed north. Beth and Nathan have only been in Chicago a couple of weeks and haven't had much of a chance to do exploring. So we didn't know exactly where we were going, but we knew the general direction. Some people on the train heard us talking and asked if they could help us. We said we were looking for the Botanic Gardens and everyone started discussing where we should get off. Beth and I just sat there and listened to the banter and then all of the sudden someone shouted, "You get off now!" so we bolted off the train. We stood in the empty stop and realized that no one had taken our money to ride the train nor did any one tell us what to do when we got off, so we just started walking. It couldn't be too far, right? We walked about 2 miles...it was a lovely evening and the way the train is scheduled we were pretty much stuck there for awhile anyway. The only thing we knew about the garden is that it closes at dusk and dusk was quickly approaching. About the time we were going to give up, we spotted a sign.
Victory! Just as luck would have it the garden was closed due to flooding but the guy told us we could come back in the morning. I just laughed and we began the 2 miles back to the Metra. We finally got to the station and a train was approaching and we ran to catch it, which woke both of our sleeping babies up. It drove right past us and we were left looking like idiots...again. If Beth or I had any baby weight left it was all gone by the end of this day!
This all we saw of the garden
Waiting for the Metra
The man you can see in the back gave us the wrong directions!
Day 2 to come...
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