Chicago- Wednesday, June 28, 2017

     Once again, we slowed our start in order to get past rush hour.  However, we decided to leave Chicago a day early so we packed up everything that had gotten scattered over the small room, and packed the car.  We then headed towards the Shedd Aquarium.  Columbus Avenue was closed down for preparations for the Taste of Chicago, even though that event doesn't even start until July 5th, more than a week away.   The traffic in the area was slowing down a little because of the diversions.

     Scott's cousin, Denise, took us around the Shedd Aquarium.  We picked her up at her and Mark's condo, which overlooks Soldier Field and is only a short walk from the aquarium.  We drove together there today, and parked a little closer, partly because it was threatening rain.  Once inside, it was like we were getting our own private tour, and she seemed to have a wealth of interesting things to say in front of each fish and animal.  She normally does behind the scenes tours and she has recognized on a sign in the aquarium as one of the long-time volunteers at the institution.  We always enjoy aquariums, but going through with her added a whole new dimension and was an enormously interesting.

     We started out by at the Stingray Touch.  Denise had told us to watch for George, a large dark-colored male ray who often hides beneath the waterfall but sometimes comes out and splashes unsuspecting people.  Julie did get to touch him, but didn't get splashed.  Next we went to the beluga whales.  Now, you have to understand that ever since we saw the whales trying to mate at the Georgia Aquarium last summer, the words "beluga whale" are enough to get Anna and Emma smirking and giggling.  Imagine our surprise when she told us that it was probably Beethoven, one of the whales that was from the aquarium here.  Because of the need to carefully breed the whales, the any of them might be shipped around the country.  When Anna asked the logical question, "How do they get the whales from one aquarium to another?" Denise answered "FedEx."  She then described how the whales are carefully moved and flown in a FedEx plane with their keepers.  We didn't see Beethoven today, but we did see a young male named Grayson.   We saw Pacific white-sided dolphins that had a different face from the bottle-nosed dolphins we're used to seeing.  They loved swimming very fast and were up-side down as much as they were right-side up.   The grumpy looking rockhopper penguins were nesting, and she told us how the aquarium staff sneaks the eggs away from them, view them to see if they are actually fertilized and growing, care for them, and then sneak they eggs back in to the penguins just before they hatch.  Many people are using the penguin encounters for wedding proposals now.  The sea otters are smart enough to unscrew the covers of the filters, so there were large rocks put on them to keep them down.

     The next major section of the aquarium that we went through was called "Amazon Rising," which is designed to show the difference between the times of low water in the river compared to the highly flooded times.  There were almost as many land animals there as there were fish.  Denise described how much she liked to sit in front of the coral reef tank and the shark tank to enjoy the peacefulness of them swimming around when there aren't many visitors around.   She showed us a trio of shark eggs that were held up to illuminate them from behind.   We could clearly see little worm-like shark embryos wiggling around in them.  In front of many of the tanks, Denise would say, "Oh! I love this one because..." but once she actually said, "The Mandarin dragonet is my favorite," and she noted how the fluorescent blue lines look like someone painted them on it.  [It's the fish pictured at the start of this blog entry.]  She also told us about how an archer fish once shot her in the face with a squirt of water when she was talking to a group of visitors.  Julie's favorite animal of the day was the octopus who was very active and crawling around on the front of the glass.  Other octopi that we have seen have usually just been curled up in a corner.

    We were having such great time in the aquarium, but even though there was quite a bit left to see, we also had to be getting to lunch.  It was after 1:00 when we dropped Denise back off at her condo and parted ways.  We then drove to a Corner Bakery (which turns out to be a chain that is very similar to Panera's).  We had finally gotten in touch with Scott's other cousin, Dean, who lives quite a ways north of the city, but is now working in a office downtown, just a few blocks from where we met him.  We had seen Mark and Denise at Scott's Mom and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary last year, but it has been even longer since we've seen Dean.  We thought it was funny when Dean mentioned brought up the idea that "We all start to morph into our parents."  Last night, Julie had noted that Mark looks and acts a lot like his father, but Dean has become even more of the spitting image of him.   We were sorry that we weren't able to see Carol, but we were certainly glad that Dean was able to make time for us at short notice and for such a late lunch.

     Anna has been looking for shirts or hoodies from the TV show "Chicago Fire," Julie is also a fan of "Chicago P.D."  Anna wanted to go back to Navy Pier for a hoodie she had seen there, but we learned that it was actually merchandise for the local soccer franchise, also called "Chicago Fire."  Anna really wanted something from the TV show instead, or even from the actually fire department.  When Scott learned that the programs are on NBC, he pointed out that there is an NBC building here in Chicago, and we had passed it several times, including on the bus tour.  It was where Oprah filmed her shows when she was in Chicago.  Scott figured that since the NBC building at Rockefeller Plaza in New York has a great store with lots of merchandise from their programs, that there must be a store here at the Chicago building too.  The internet seemed to confirm this idea, and we made our way through the traffic to the building.  Scott and Anna went in but were told by the security person in the lobby that there had been a store but it closed a few years back.

     Even though it was approaching 5:00 and we would now be facing rush hour traffic to get out of the city, we were ready to say our goodbyes to the Windy City.  It was a great couple of days, but we're ready to move on and start the next leg of our trip a day early.  We made our way across the Wisconsin border and added a new state to all four of our life-lists.  (Actually, from here on in, every state from here to Washington will be new for all four of us.)  We then stopped for the night at a motel in Pleasant Prairie, the first town across the border along the Lake Michigan shore.  There was a tornado warning tonight, though nothing came of it in our immediate area, we don't think.  However, we did get the first significant rainfall tonight on what has otherwise been a week of cool but beautiful weather.  We took it easy this evening, had some Pizza Hut, and turned in rather early.