Road Trip!

We set off on June 30th for Pittsburgh, with a few stops on the way, for Charlie's baptism on the 4th of July. First stop was Chicago, where we stayed a couple of nights and took in the sights along Michigan Ave. We rolled in around 2:30 in the afternoon ( just before rush hour traffic - yeah!), checked into our hotel, and started a quick walking tour of the area. We found that Taste of Chicago was in full swing not too far away. We sampled a few tasty goodies and then caught a bus to Navy Pier for dinner and Wednesday night fireworks.

The weather was gorgeous - low 70's and not a cloud in the sky!

It was a little windy out at the end of the pier, though - the flags were really flying!

It was neat watching the boats come and go, and now I wish we would have taken a sunset harbor cruise. Oh well - next time! We hung around until the fireworks display at 9:30, and then caught a bus back to our hotel.

As we headed to the Field Museum on Thursday morning, we came across this sculpture in Grant Park. It's called Agora, and was commisioned by a Polish artist. Here's a description, taken when I googled it for more info:

“Agora,” a permanent installation in the Grant Park, by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. It consists of 106 headless armless cast iron figures, each about 9 feet tall, shell like, frozen in walking movement. The figures are similar in general shape, but different in details. Models for each figure were made by hand, by the artist and her three assistants. The surfaces of figures are like a tree bark or wrinkled face expressing a different individuality of each sculpture.

Very interesting!



The dinosaur skeleton outside the museum was dressed in a Chicago Blackhawks jersey, in honor of their recent Stanley Cup win.

We saw Sue, the most intact Tyrranosaurus Rex skeleton ever found.

(See the statue in the Blackhawks jersey in the upper righthand corner? I wonder who in climbed all the way up there to dress that baby? - ha!)

One of the exhibits was called Robo Sue, and consisted of robotic dinosaurs that actually followed you with their eyes as you walked past - very strange, and a little spooky!

This is Sue, 3/4 size, getting ready to take a bite out of Chuck.

This triceratops wasn't too interested in me, but one of the smaller ones really seemed to be following me closely.

We spent most of the day at the museum, and then headed to the Art Institute, which had free admission from 5:00-8:00 on Thursday night. After a quick tour there, we went to the new Millenium Park, where we had dinner at a sidewalk cafe and then attended an outdoor concert.

The pavillion at Millenium Park is really neat.

The Bean (officially known as Cloud Gate) is a very interesting sculpture. Another googled description:

Cloud Gate on the AT&T Plaza
Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives. Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.

Here's my (slightly distorted) reflection in the sculpture.

We heard a great group from Haiti at the evening concert, part of a Music Without Borders concert series.

I took quite a few pictures of all the interesting lines and angles created by the backdrop of the Chicago skyline. It was a beautiful night!
We left Chicago early Friday morning for the 8-hour drive to Pittsburgh. Once there, we checked into our hotel, hooked up with Joyce and Paul who had arrived a day earlier, and then met Andy's parents for dinner at a great Italian restaurant. After dessert and lots of conversation back at their house, we crashed for the night.

On Saturday morning, we again met Joyce and Paul and took off for Falling Water, a Frank Lloyd Wright home about 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. We ended up wandering the back roads through the countryside since we missed our exit on the tollway. Fortunately, we had a good map!

The home was designed in the '30s, and it was built right into the boulders on a hillside over a water fall -really amazing design and construction! The cost back then for the whole complex was about $150,000, about $2.5 million in today's costs. We were able to tour the inside as well, but no photography was allowed.

It was cool and shady all morning. Fortunately, we were there before the heat wave hit. I can't imagine wandering through the woods if it was 100 degrees!

Our next stop was Station Square in downtown Pittsburgh for a ride on the incline railway.

People living at the top of the bluff still use this mode of transportation. About 24 people fit in one car, and it gets really hot in the summer (no air-conditioning and no open windows), and really cold in the winter (no heat, either). The overlook at the top gave us some great views of downtown Pittsburgh:

Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers

Joyce and Paul took a duck boat tour, but since we went on one 4 years ago, Chuck was more than happy to hang out at The Hard Rock Cafe with a "cold one."

After dinner at Houlihan's, we hung out on the waterfront waiting for the post-game fireworks (the Pirates were playing the Phillies). The stadium was blocked by some buildings, though, so we only saw the tops of the fireworks. We should have taken an evening ride on the incline!

I experimented with some setting on my camera to get some night shots of downtown.

Another gorgeous night!
We were up bright and early the next morning, ready for the baptism at Emmanuel Lutheran church, where Andy's dad is pastor.

Charlie wore Andy's baptism outfit, and was so good during the whole service!

He actually slept through the whole thing.

It was really neat that Greg baptized his first grandchild.
What a special moment for all involved!

Still sleeping!
He also lasted through many family pictures after the service.

Grandparents: Chuck and Jane, and Greg and Angela

Great grandparents: EllaMae Held, and Rosemarie and Nick Druga

Charlie is so lucky to actually have all of his grandparents plus 4 great grandparents still around (including Chuck's mom).

Andy's siblings: sister Nicole, sister-in-law Mandi,
and brother Ben

Minnesota family: great aunt and uncle, Joyce and Paul
After all the picture-taking, we went back to the Held house for a wonderful brunch with all of the relatives

Chuck and his little namesake, Charlie

Andy's cousin, Tati, was the flower girl in their wedding. She had so much fun playing with Charlie!

I'm convinced that Charlie can sleep anywhere and through anything.

The weather really started to heat up on Sunday, so we skipped going back into Pittsburgh for the fireworks and opted to just watch them on TV in the comfort of Held's family room. Chuck also was not too impressed with the thought of traffic in downtown Pittsburgh. The roads are pretty crazy due to all the bridges and rivers!

It was a wonderful day, and a great chance to get to know Andy's extended family in a more relaxed setting than the wedding 4 years ago. If anyone from Pittsburgh is reading this, thanks for all the hospitality!!

We left Pittsburgh Monday morning, and it was HOT! Our car thermometer registered 98 degrees as we drove through Ohio. We decided to give the poor car a break, and took what we thought would be a short stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

4 1/2 hours later, we finally finished most of the exhibits and made it to the gift shop.
What an amazing place! Unfortunately, again, photography was not allowed so we couldn't take pictures of any of the displays, but we highly recommend a visit if you're ever near Cleveland! Some highlights: Jim Morrison's cub scout uniform, Jimi Hendrix' childhood couch, Elvis' Lincoln with his initials on the doors, Bruce Springsteen's first guitar, lots of Beatles memorabilia, and on, and on, and on. I was really impressed with all of the original hand-written pages of song lyrics. Bruce Springsteen had a whole spiral notebook full of drafts for "Born in the USA," with lots of lines scratched out and re-written, and there were many pages of lyrics from John Lennon.

They did have a few giant guitars for some photo ops and we just couldn't resist.

I would have preferred to have my picture taken by John Lennon's piano (splattered with wax from a candle that melted while he was writing a song), but I guess this will have to do.

When we returned to the car, my M&M's were all melted, and they were INSIDE the cooler. Hmmmmm - a little hot? We drove on to South Bend, where we stayed overnight, and then headed home to Minnesota on Tuesday. We saw our very first clouds of the whole trip on Tuesday near the Wisconsin Dells, and even had about 2 minutes of rain.

We arrived home late Tuesday afternoon, and we're actually ready to go again - I love road trips!