My kind of town, Chicago is

We waited decades for one of our companies to send us to the Windy City for some conference, but it never seemed to work out.  So in May 2010 Mary and I decided to finally spend a long weekend in Chicago on our own dime for my 50th birthday.  No regrets.  Chicago is a must-see for anyone who loves museums or architecture.  Or a walkable big city.  For 3 days we strolled down Michigan Avenue until our feet were throbbing.

We wanted an older hotel so we chose The Allerton Hotel on The Magnificent Mile.  Smallish hotel room, but it suited us fine.

The hotel was perfectly located to see most of the famous Chicago sights.  But our time was limited and we only walked South each day.  Therefore we did not go North and see Wrigley Field or the Lincoln Park Zoo (very unlike me to pass up a zoo) or the Chicago History Museum.

The first day we took an architectural boat tour of the city.  It doesn't matter which tour company you choose.  All of the tours cost the same and they're all 90 minutes long and it is something you have to experience.  The camera cannot really capture the grandiose buildings, but I do have to include this one shot for any Wilco fans who like the cover of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

That is the Marina City complex, designed in 1959 by Bertrand Goldberg and constructed 1961-1968.

The other days were spent going down to see The Art Institute of Chicago and The Field Museum.  You can click the links if you want to go through the buildings.  I must post one photo since I have always wanted to pose with Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found:

One pleasant surprise along Michigan Avenue was Millennium Park, which has The Bean.  The public sculpture is named Cloud Gate, but everyone calls it The Bean and these shots show why it has become a tourist destination since its dedication in 2006.

We were fortunate that the weather was spectacular on the first weekend in May.  Bad weather would preclude the boat tours on the river, but you could still take public transportation to the museums (and maybe do a dinner cruise out on the lake).  Luckily we had clear blue skies and enjoyed these sights as we walked South with Lake Michigan on our left:

I have not mentioned food in this post because that was the one thing that was not memorable about the Windy City.  Perhaps it was bad luck, but the two fine restaurants where we ate did not impress us.  Chicago hot dogs are still hot dogs (just don't put ketchup on them).  Lastly, we are on Team John Stewart when it comes to NYC Pizza > Chicago Deep Dish Pizza.

PIZZA vs. Tomato Soup in a bread bowl indeed!

Yellowstone is best experienced with children

Sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas":
5 ... Boiling ... Springs!
4 Stupid People,
3 Howling Coyotes,
2 Mountain Bears,
and a lone Wolf eating something big!

Those were some of the lyrics the youngsters in our car came up with as we drove around the first National Park in the USA.  Just like old time circuses and Disney's parks, Yellowstone is best experienced with kids.  Nearly 20 years ago we headed out with our children, one of their grandmothers, our best friend and her daughter to see Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Park.  All crammed into a rented minivan we picked up in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City is a perfect airport for visiting Yellowstone.  You are only 5 hours away and you have a couple of scenic ways to get to Northern Wyoming.  On the way up we took I-15 North and stopped in Pocatello, Idaho because we wanted to see the Craters of the Moon National Monument.  We returned via smaller roads, driving by Bear Lake and the town of Logan, Utah.

Craters of the Moon is an interesting experience if you want to walk through lava flows without going all the way to Hawai'i or Iceland.  Since we booked our hotel in the town of West Yellowstone it was a decent way to start our nature trip.

Pro Tip: if you live on the East Coast and are traveling to Western National Parks, stay on East Coast time!  That is your superpower.  While the kids weren't very happy about getting tossed into the back of the minivan at 6:30 AM, that allowed us to be one of the first people in the park every morning.  Before 8 AM, on our first day, we believe we saw one of the wolves that had been recently reintroduced into Yellowstone.  The large canine, larger than the coyotes that we saw a few days later, spent over 10 minutes chewing apart something the size of a marmot or a woodchuck.

The only day we slept in and did not get to Park's entrance until 9:30 AM we spent almost an hour in stand-still traffic just inside Yellowstone because of a large Bison jam.  Sure, it's neat to take a picture like this one out of your car window, but not when you don't move an inch in 45 minutes.

The bountiful wildlife in Yellowstone is enough to keep children entertained as they try to be the first one to spy the next bison or elk in the largest national park of the lower 48 states.  The Lamar Valley in Northeastern Yellowstone is the recommended spot for wildlife viewing and we also had great luck driving South to Yellowstone Lake from Canyon Village.  Towards Lake Hospital.  The friendly hospital where our son received quite a few stitches near his eye after he fell while balancing himself on a dead log.

We knew the kids would enjoy seeing the megafauna in the park, including a couple of bears we encountered when driving through the mountain pass.  They also got to see three coyotes howling at each other as they worked their way through a herd of bison.  The children were also delighted by the boiling mudspots and hot springs in the park.  The geysers in the Old Faithful area were OK with them.  But the best eruptions they saw were in the less well known Norris Geyser Basin.

This cannot be stressed enough: Yellowstone is a dangerous place.  It is not Disney World.  When I was not driving I read a macabre book purchased in one of the gift shops: "Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park".  Many of the accident involved boiling yourself in a hot spring or getting too close to a bison.  Which is why we turned around on this particular walkway:

After reading some of the less gruesome stories in the Death book to the kids they began looking for tourist doing stupid things, like a woman taking a sip of the water at the Grand Prismatic Spring or someone standing too close to the edge at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  Yes, Yellowstone is so immense it has it's own Grand Canyon, with a spectacular waterfall.

To this day the kids still talk about this Yellowstone trip.  With us, with their friends, and among themselves.  And it's always the Yellowstone trip.  The not-so-humble Grand Teton National Park never gets mentioned.  I supposed that is because the magnificent scenery cannot compare to all of the wildlife and geothermal activity in the  neighboring park right above it.

Having visited both parks in a small RV a decade before this trip, we can confirm that it is much better to experience the natural beauty of Yellowstone through the eyes of a child (or three).  Besides, only when traveling with kids would a minivan headed to back to Salt Lake City keep singing over and over:

5 ... Boiling ... Springs!
4 Stupid People,
3 Howling Coyotes,
2 Mountain Bears,
and a lone Wolf eating something big!