Roooooo-Deeeee / Sweet Home Chicago!

Good evening everyone! We've survived another day. Total Mileage so far: 883. Not too bad for two days, and the CR-V, while covered in dead bugs, is holding up like a champ.

We started this morning bright and early with a hearty breakfast at the Fairfield Inn with the Yankees. Well, the little league version. The ride to Notre Dame was uneventful - farms, farms, dilapidated buildings and more farms. However, South Bend was another story. We got to campus at about 9:40 for 10:00 mass. Good thing, because the Basilica is about a 15 minute walk from visitor parking....20 if you've torn an ACL recently. Well, we were quite surprised when we opened the doors to see the place packed to the gills. Had we gotten there any later, we'd have been sitting behind the alter. (and yes, those sections quickly filled up too!) They let us know we were being filmed for DirectTV and the Hallmark chanel, and Mass began. They don't fool around...14 Priests! And then probably another 10 deacons and another 10 seminarians. Yowsah! Plus, one of the deacons or seminarians was the incense guru...incense over everything! Even us. But the mass was beautiful and the choir was absolutely angelic, and Lisa ran into someone from Gloucester. What're the odds?

After Mass we took a short walking tour of the campus, which included the Grotto back behind the Basilica and Notre Dame Stadium, home to Knute Rockne, Rudy Ruettiger and the Gipper. Here are photos from the home of the Fightin' Irish.



After a quick change out of Church clothes, we drove up to Chi-town, but not without a little adventure. I needed a new wrap for that scraped up leg you saw in yesterday's pictures, and pluged 'Pharmacy' into the GPS which took us 2 or 3 miles into Gary, Indiana. Woah Nellie! For a city with such happy song about it, not a very happy place.

Anyway, we quickly realized that we were changing time zones, and therefore might be able make the Cubbies game. All this time, we thought we wouldn't get to Wrigley until an hour after the first pitch, but it looked like we would get there in time to buy tickets off a scalper in the 2nd inning. No luck. Traffic killed us. By the time we found a spot and walked down to 1060 West Addison, it was the 5th inning, and with the weather we had, everyone in Chicago wanted to be inside Wrigley. But we enjoyed the Wrigleyville atmosphere, walked down Waveland Ave looking for a homer, and looked into right field from the street.

After a hearty, and late, lunch, we drove over to Lincoln Park, on the shores of Lake Michigan. Since the zoo was free (with a $14 charge for parking!) we took that in. It was a very nice zoo, but Lisa's favorite part was the abundance of bunnies, which happened to be everywhere. It's like they multiplied or something. Finally, we made our way over to the beach area. The lake was a brilliant shade of blue and everyone was out enjoying the weather.

Here are the Chicago pictures...


All in all, a good day, and not too much driving. Tomorrow is a long day with the only major stop being the Field of Dreams movie site. I really hope the corn is tall enough for me to disappear into!

Good Night!

Lisa and John