Nothing interesting to report today; we drove through rain, we sat in traffic, etc. Just wanted to let you all know we got home safe and sound!

Well, we didn’t do all that much in Chicago, honestly. It was pretty challenging with Brian’s conference, and the election celebration kind of knocked us both out for yesterday (though Brian did make it to class — good job, Brian!). Then today, after several days of unseasonably warm (balmy, even) weather and sunshine, things took a turn and we had pretty serious clouds and scattered rain, so it wasn’t the most pleasant day for exploring. But we do have a few more things to share from our trip, such as the view from our hotel room!

We could see the Sears Tower (kind of hard to spot in this photo, but it’s there in the background to the left of the red crane) and the river and everything. Nice! And today, despite the rain, we did go back down to Millennium Park & Grant Park to see it in the daytime without a quarter of a million other people there, and we visited The Bean:

I love a bean. I also loved seeing the banners that arrived yesterday:

We’ll have to return to Chicago at some point to do more awesome stuff! We’re in Ohio now at a Super 8 outside Toledo and should get home by late tomorrow.

Brian and I were so lucky to be in Chicago tonight and to be able to attend the Obama rally in Grant Park (which is within walking distance from our hotel). I wish I had a better command of language so I could express to you how overwhelming, incredible, special, inspiring, moving, and amazing our evening was; things being as they are, I’m just going to show you some pictures from our night.

On the way back to our room, Brian and I were talking about the unlikely series of events in our lives that brought us here to Chicago and to this moment — and how lucky we are that we’ve had this amazing handful of months in which pretty much every day we’ve gotten to do something that we’ll both remember forever. We feel truly fortunate to have been here for this historic night! America, thank you for voting!! YES WE CAN!!!

Happy Birthday to Brian!! We had some good times today here in Chicago. Our day started off early when we received a wake-up call from the hotel at 6:30am! Whoops! We didn’t order that, so my first order of business once I was ready for the day was to go down to the front desk and get assurance from the manager that that wouldn’t happen again. Oy vey!

Brian went to class in the morning, then we met up for lunch. Does anyone remember this classic SNL sketch? (You’ll have to sit through a commercial first when you click play below.)

It was based on the Billy Goat Tavern here in Chicago, so even though it’s hugely touristy, we decided to go there for lunch. Of course they’ve capitalized on their SNL-found fame…

But seriously, it’s exactly the same in there as it is in the sketch. They yelled at us for looking at the menu and everything. Good times!

After that, we walked along the Magnificent Mile for a bit, which was fun, and then Brian went back to class and I decided to head out to Wicker Park, which was also fun.

Then for the evening, we stayed in to watch Monday Night Football and the SNL special; we got room service and ate cupcakes I had procured earlier in the day from Bake For Me across the street:

They weren’t very good, actually, but that’s okay because to make up for the wake-up call, the hotel sent us this:

Thanks, hotel! You can rudely awaken us and then send us free champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries anytime.

Tomorrow I intend to sit in our room and fret all day until we can go down to Grant Park for what I certainly hope will be a VICTORY party for Barack. Don’t forget to vote!

So, today was mostly just a driving day, but when we saw how close we were to Indiana Jones Dunes National Lakeshore, we couldn’t resist stopping in to check it out. We went to the visitor center and asked what we should see in our limited time and the ladies there recommended West Beach, so off we went. We trekked up these steps to an overlook:

… where we were rewarded with a great view of Chicago, looking Atlantis-like in the distance across Lake Michigan:

A strange aspect of this national park is that the parkland isn’t contiguous — that’s not unheard of; for example, Acadia’s parkland isn’t contiguous either, but what’s weird about Indiana Dunes is that the non-parkland in between parcels of parkland houses giant factories and industrial centers.

This kind of disrupts communing with nature and the like, even when you happen to come to the park during sunset:

Still, though, both the dunes themselves and Lake Michigan are so beautiful:

Oh, Indiana. I had no idea.

So anyway, after that, we finally drove into Chicago!

We’re staying at a very nice hotel for a change because Brian’s conference is being held here. After months of cheap motels, I had completely forgotten how refreshing and rejuvenating it can be to stay in a place with, like, real furniture, a nice bathroom, a comfy bed, etc. Brian is going to be in class for most of the trip, and I’m planning on spending a lot of time sitting on the chaise lounge next to the big window in our room with a lovely view of the Chicago River and working on my laptop away from construction noise. Don’t worry, we’ll do some fun Chicago things, too — hopefully including attending Obama’s victory speech on Tuesday night. Please don’t forget to VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!

Milan, Ohio, of course. We’re on our way to Chicago (we split the driving into two days so Brian will be fresh as a daisy for his class, which begins on Sunday). We’re staying at an ultra-luxe Super 8: our room has a door out to the parking lot AND a door into the hall of the hotel. It’s pretty much the best door situation I’ve seen in an economy motel (and I know from economy motels). Also, we have a totally awesome cobweb outside the door to the parking lot with a giant spider and everything. Normally, this would be disturbing, but since it’s Halloween, we’re just calling it festive.

Before we left this morning, I realized that I had forgotten to put my credit card payment in the mail the other day. Since I was still packing, Brian went down to the lobby of our building with my envelope. We don’t have a mailbox or anything in our building or even on our block (sigh), so usually when we have things to mail, we either cross the street to take them to the mailbox on the corner or we just leave them in the lobby. Pretty much everyone in our building tucks his outgoing mail into this big sign on top of our mailboxes:

We were trying to get going, so Brian opted not to go across the street today. But, alas, tragedy ensued! Brian placed the envelope on top of the sign as usual… and it fell right through! Aaah!

So anyway, the point is, I had to go all MacGyver on that thing with a letter opener, and you guys are going to love what I unearthed from behind that sign. Check it out!

We found a telephone bill from when stamps cost 22 cents, something from Brown’s Arlington Honda dated 1986, and my personal favorite:

…this 80s-tastic sales mailing from Glamour magazine circa 1988. Nice!

We also got my credit card payment, by the way, so we’re all set, and we did leave all this old stuff down there so we wouldn’t accidentally be guilty of tampering with the mail. It’s a federal offense, you know.

“Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” — John F. Kennedy

In other cities, folks vote early to save time at the polls. Brian and I have to vote early this election because of our upcoming trip to Chicago, so we ventured downtown to take care of it this morning. Poor D.C. There was a huge line with tons of people, and we were told the wait was about an hour and a half. Brian had to leave to meet some friends for a prearranged lunch, but I decided to stick it out.

In reality, it took about an hour and 50 minutes, and we (I mean, all the other voters and I) were herded from hallway to room, chair to chair, one line to the next, in a display of cheerful inefficiency that I know can happen in any municipal office… but I like to think there’s nothing quite as special as a D.C. government operation. We were some committed voters, though; no one (well, except Brian) gave up and left. Voting is important! (And Brian returned after lunch, by the way. He thinks for him it only took about an hour and 20 minutes.)

Anyway, after I cast my digital ballot on one of the two (!) electronic voting machines (hello?! Where are my tax dollars going??), I headed down to the Metro, where I had to wait 14 minutes for a train to take me back to the Woodley Park station (where, by the way, the elevator had just broken — again) and my apartment, the former balcony of which is now apparently being used as some kind of masonry center for the construction crew. Awesome!

But seriously, I would have done all that and more if necessary in order to vote, even though I know D.C. will go for Obama, like, 99.9%.

For this journey, we decided to wait until we got home to do a route log. This was a much smaller trip and didn’t seem to require daily updates. It ended up being a little more involved that we initially planned, but that’s okay—that’s what’s fun about a road trip. You may have to view the larger version of the map to actually see where we went.

Isabel and I have now each visited 42 of these 50 states (we were together for all of them except Texas and Florida). The states we haven’t hit so far are: Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky. If we’re feeling ambitious, we could knock out three to five of those states on our December trip. I never had a goal visiting all 50 states before, but now I totally do. Looks like we could do it pretty easily now. Wonder what we’ll shoot for next?

On a somewhat unrelated note… after traveling thousands of miles and seeing the most fascinating things this country has to offer, I’m left with one burning question: New Jersey, what’s your deal? Do you really not trust me? Are you worried that I’m not smart enough to handle the complex operation that is pumping gas? Is this task really so complex that you must leave it up to a professional? Twice I have nearly run out of gas to make it over the state line so I can fill my own gas tank. Maybe I’m a little crazy, but I like to be in charge of my own petrol. Besides, I have no idea what tipping etiquette is for those guys and that’s enough to make me break out into a sweat. End rant, start log:

View Larger Map

We left Milford this morning and headed over to Norwalk, Conn., because we had heard of this place called Stew Leonard’s, reputed to be the World’s Largest Dairy Store. When we got there, we were kind of disappointed to see what looked like just a regular grocery store from the outside, but we decided to venture in anyway, just in case. We were not disappointed! Stew’s houses its own milk bottling plant right inside the store:

And as if that weren’t enough, it also houses a variety of animatronic figures that sing and dance while you browse for groceries. For example, there is singing animatronic butter:

There’s also a band of singing milk cartons, a lobster trapeze artist, singing lettuce and bananas, a talking cow, etc., etc., etc. The other cool thing about Stew’s is that they have information readily available about where their products come from with photos of the farms and the like. They also have a live video feed of their own dairy farm:

As Brian said, that’s transparency!

So after that, we got on the road and went through several states, starting with New York:

Then, New Jersey:

Then, briefly, Delaware!

Then, Pennsylvania:

In Penn., we made a stop at the Herr Foods snack factory to take their factory tour.

It was a great tour — one of the best we’ve done. We learned all about how Jim Herr started the company with, like, a single kettle and a potato peeler, and we saw pretzels, popcorn, and chips being made. We were the only people on the tour at that point (we totally dodged a bullet because an entire busload of schoolchildren had been on the tour before ours), so that was really fun. Our tour guide went onto the manufacturing floor towards the end of the tour and filled a giant bag of freshly cooked potato chips just for us! They were still warm and everything. Obviously, we are now obsessed with Herr’s. Check out our giant potato chip bag!

Thanks, Herr Foods!

After that, we continued into Maryland:

We met up with some friends for dinner, which was fantabulous as always, and then we headed home. We’re back in D.C. now and have about a week to recover before we get back on the road again!! We have a lot to do this week, of course, but we’ll try to check in, especially if there are any balcony updates.