Contributed by:
Tabitha Dial, YourHub.com
Article Contributed on: 9/5/2006 1:59:16 PM
I would like to say I was whisked away to Chicago over the Labor Day weekend, but that'd be almost untrue. I flew there with
Alex, his fellow pilot,
Steve, and Steve's longtime friend,
David (who happens to be dating the sister of Steve's wife!) in a twin engine seminole.
It's not the first time I took a long trip in such a mode of transport. We took one all over the southwest back in December. So I knew that such trips mean hours of planning as well as hours of beautiful views. The flight itself took about six and a half hours, but protocol requires a weather check, filing of a flight plan, calculation of fuel needed and refueling at each stop, so our trip to Chicago took about nine hours total.
And I loved it. I particularly loved getting to visit Chicago, birthplace of spoken word poetry.
Alex has an aunt and uncle who live there and graciously hosted our stay in their awesome home, within walking distance of "The L", the train we used to get in and out of the city itself.
Our first stop was the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hopeless search for pancakes -- Alex's uncle told us that the restaurants in the area we were in cater to business there and so they were, with the exception of Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's, closed), where we spent two or three hours enjoying contemporary and American artwork.
I'd never been so excited to go to a museum for a number of years. And inside, I found a handful of paintings that I had to familarize myself with in my high school humanities class, so it was a pleasant trip down memory lane.
I also loved visiting Millennium Park and its unique public artwork. More on that can be found in my photos.
Finally, we walked to Lake Michigan and sunk our toes in the sand before we returned to our hosts, who took us out for a wonderful dinner at the nearby Mexican food restaurant. I teased that we didn't need to order any food because the owner kept spoiling us with free goodies because he knows Alex's aunt and uncle so well.
The next day was spent flying and snoozing and reading more poetry (books by
Maya Angelou and a very talented
Joshua Marie Wilkinson, who also lives in Denver). We got home around 8:30 on Labor Day after a trip to Dairy Queen and soon after went right to sleep.