Road Trip: Chicago

Just click on the photo to see a larger copy of it. These are from our trip to Chicago in 1998. All these images were cropped for size purposes, the originals have more of a "border", and usually look a little better.

This trip was long before our chronicling of trips, and our return visit to the city in 2023.

[This paragraph is being written in March, 2023.]
This older trip was taken long before we started chronicling our journeys. But we do have some noteworthy memories to make a note of before even more of them get replaced by other memories.

• When we arrived at the Summerfield Suites hotel, they did not have a reservation for us. After quite a few minutes, I determined that they had the reservation under Michael Stevens, not Steven Michel (this was before full computer automation).
• Pam observed a fully naked women in the bathroom across the street - we were on the tenth or so floor.
• We had a meal at Gino's pizza and wrote our name on the wall - that's a thing.
• We had a meal at the Rainforest Café.
• We visited Merchant Mart, a little late - we left a little after 5:00 PM. While walking back to Michigan Avenue, Linda read in the tour guide "avoid walking near Merchant Mart at night" (or something to that effect). We left unscathed.
• We visted the Museum of Science and Industry.
• We got on the bus to visit one of Andew LLoyd Wright's house. In Oak Park. The last tour was accepted at 3:00. We boarded the bus - yes, bus - at about 2:00 and we figired would should have plenty of time to get there. Well... the bus was a local. And we did NOT have enough time to get there. The bus' route ended at the edge of Oak Park - and it was like there was a line drawn through the city separating Chicago from Oak Park. After we got off the bus, we still had a walk to get to the house. And it was already 3:00. So we headed perpendicular to the route we just took and got to the subway platform and took the ell back into the city.
• We visited the Sears Tower - it was still called that back then, I think - and got the pictures below.
• We visited the acquarium.
• We visited NBC studios, and took a green screen picture of us on a Star Trek® transporter deck.
• We went to Easter Sunday Mass and it turned out the officiant for the service was the newly apppointed Cardinal. This was a big thing, and the local news was on sight doing interviews. We acctually were interviewed, but didn't see it on TV (we didn't try so we don't know if it actually was aired or not.)