Family Vacation
Sure, next month, Christine, Austin, and Victoria will make their annual pilgrimage to the Jersey Shore, but Keith will inevitably remain home to avoid the crowds, sand, and frustration. So, this brief week, inclusive of a trip to Chicago and Lake George, was going to be our “family vacation”.
Initially, this wasn’t in the plans, to be honest, but Victoria had been spending time in a rabbit hole online about the tragedy of the Titanic, and she learned that there was a Titanic exhibit in Chicago that she wanted to go to. Austin expressed some interest, and we could easily find other things to do, so we made plans to go to Chicago. Keith and Christine decided to purchase tickets to the Titanic “experience” first then plan the rest of the trip around that.
The whole family woke up early Friday morning to go to Darlene’s for breakfast before hitting the road for Chicago with plans to arrive in Chicago for dinner Friday night, and – wouldn’t you know it – things went exactly as planned. Sort of.
Austin drove through New York while Keith worked in the back seat. Once we crossed the state line into Pennsylvania, Keith took the wheel and drove the remaining portion of the drive through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana before approaching Chicago, which is only a short distance past the border. As we approached the city (traveling interstate route 90 the entire drive), Keith asked Christine to plot a course to the hotel: the Marriot downtown.
It took a short while to find the affiliated parking garage 2 blocks away, but we eventually found a home for the car with plans to leave it in place for the duration of the next 1.5 days. The family loaded up their things, proceeded down 5 floors in the garage, 2 blocks, and a wait in line to check in … all to discover that we had a reservation at the Marriot that was another 2 miles south. We had reservations at the Marriot Marquis, not the Marriot Downtown. After paying a brief bio-break for Keith and Victoria, the family returned to the car to pay the $32 fee for 30 minutes of parking before driving 2 miles down the road to the other Marriot. To be fair, we ultimately drove to the Marriot that we always wanted; Keith had merely mistakenly thought is was called “Downtown”, but was obviously very mistaken.
The room was very nice and on the 29th floor, higher than the kids had ever been. When Keith had initially tried to book the room, he had tried to book a room (at an additional expense) facing the shore of Lake Michigan, but – by the time he finally entered his information – the room wasn’t available, so the room that we stayed in faced due west. And while the western view didn’t include the Chicago skyline, it did feature the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower and you could see the lights of the city and surrounding areas for tens of miles. Both kids enjoyed the view and it ended up being a happy accident that Keith was unable to reserve the room that faced the lake after all.
On Friday night, we went to an Italian restaurant that was within walking distance and everyone seemed to enjoy their meal. The highlight of the night was the waitress who, after waiting on the family throughout the evening, complimented us at the end of the meal: She thanked us and told us that we had the most polite family with the best manners that she has ever served. Granted, Keith and Christine have their (many) imperfections, but courtesy and respect has always been important and it is nice to have a family that draws positive, rather than negative, attention when out in public. The world is already full of people who are trying to gain attention through distraction; it is nice to be recognized for going against the grain.
The next morning we proceeded to eat breakfast at the hotel before going to the Field Museum. We had plans to spend a few hours at the museum before transitioning to the Shedd Aquarium for the latter half of the day. Little did we know or recognize how interesting and engaging the museum would be as we would spend the entirety of the day at the museum, rushing the last hour to move through the upper level of the museum more quickly than we would have liked.
We didn’t realize how extensive the exhibits would be. There was so, so much taxidermy, and it was all interesting. The section about the environment in the soil beneath our feet was interesting.
The portion of the museum that incorporated reflected on science and engineering through the natural world was really cool. And yeah, the dinosaurs were really neat too.
When the museum closed, we thought we had 4 hours before the fireworks at Navy Pier might begin, and Christine really wanted to see the fireworks. Navy pier was another hour (by foot) from the museum, which was already 45 minutes from the hotel, so walking to the pier was out of the question, so Keith walked north with the family to try to find an adequate spot from which we could all enjoy the fireworks after the sunset.
Within a five minute walk of the museum, there was a north-facing view from the shoreline and we could see the length of the pier in front of us. Surely, this would prove to be a nice spot to see the fireworks from. Then it was a matter of figuring out what to do for dinner.
We elected to walk back to the hotel and stop at a pub along the way that had an extensive menu that would suit everyone’s palette. It wasn’t amazing food by any stretch, but everyone got to eat the food that comforted them before retreating to the hotel for a short while and then returning (once again) to the shore of Lake Michigan to observe the fireworks.
We arrived at 8:45, expecting the fireworks to begin at 9:30 and unsure of how challenging it might be to find a spot to view them from. It turned out that there relatively few people who watched the fireworks from where we were and the fireworks weren’t scheduled to begin until 10:00, so we arrived with ample time. Way too much time, actually, but how were we to know?
The fireworks show was excellent, but brief. They only lasted for 10 minutes, but they were non-stop. It was also the first time in the kid’s lives that they were so far from a fireworks display. We couldn’t feel the fireworks. We were 1.5-2.0 miles away, so the sound even took a bit of time to reach us. This was the distance that Keith used to watch fireworks from all the time when he was a kid; he had forgotten how much of the experience is heightened by proximity and the cacophony of sensations that result from being so much closer the display. Still, the fireworks were pretty, and we enjoyed watching. Whether we got a return on our investment of a 90-minute roundtrip walk and 75-minute wait is still up for debate, though.
The next morning, we needed to pack-up, check-out, and travel to a northern suburb of Chicago for the Titanic experience. We would elect to eat breakfast once we got there. Once we arrived, we had an hour before our admission time, so we went to a local Jewish eatery for breakfast. So no bacon or sausage, but the food was fast and tasty, so it was just what we needed.
After breakfast we returned to the activity that had inspired this trip all along: the Titanic Experience.
When we walked in, each of us were given a boarding pass/ticket with a name of a real passenger of the Titanic. We would be able to see how they lived on the ship (if only for a short while), and learn at the end of the experience if they had perished or survived the fateful night.
The experience moved the patrons through the life of the Titanic from design to construction, to boarding, exploring different classes of passengers, through recreations of the hallways, rooms, bunks, and boilers. It also featured a recreation of the grand staircase made famous by the film, Titanic, and the outside deck. There were artifacts and stories of the time on display throughout the experience too, so that we could get a sense of what if might have been like to be of the time and place. There were benches that you could sit in and watch the Titanic sink in real time, as if we had been lucky enough to garner a seat on a lifeboat.
If we allowed ourselves to become immersed in the sounds, the sights, and the stories, it was indeed experiential. Although, to Austin’s chagrin, there was one portion of the experience – where there was a lot of White Flag displays – that the musical selection was too brief for the time required to enjoy the space, and it felt as if the music was increasingly repetitive. Aside from that, though, the experience was a great one.
It was also an experience that took a little longer than we had expected. Because the time slots were an hour apart, we assumed we would be done in an hour, but we were at the experience for closer to 2 hours, and by the time we worked our way through traffic, parked in a garage that was surprisingly busy (oops, a WBNA game), and walked 45 minutes to the aquarium, we would have less than 3 hours to spend at the aquarium. Keith had a bit of trepidation as the family entered the aquarium, fearful that we wouldn’t get out of it what we could, but the 3 hours was ultimately almost perfect.
The center portion, which is supposed to ridiculous, was closed, but we still saw the sea lions, beluga whales, dolphins and a variety of other creatures and fishes. The highlight for most of us was the dolphin show, but the size and grace of the belugas was amazing as well.
After the aquarium, we proceeded to begin our drive home. We had a 10 hour drive, and Victoria had an all-star softball game southeast of Utica on Monday that she wanted to participate in starting at 4:45. By starting our trip Sunday, we hoped to make the drive back on Monday a little less painful.
We would stop at an Arby’s in Indiana for a to-go meal, and we’d stay at a Hampton Inn outside of Toledo for bed and breakfast before departing in the morning to continue or drive before ultimately arriving at home by 2:30, affording us a little over an hour’s rest before getting into the car to drive another hour to watch Victoria’s team win the game while Victoria batted 2 for 2 on the day.
Tuesday morning, Christine and Austin packed up the car and travelled to Lake George to join the Belascos for a shared family vacation through Friday. Keith and Victoria stayed behind; Keith had to work and Victoria had a game south of Watertown that she wanted to play in. Christine and Austin would take in the sights at Lake George and Bolton Landing. Victoria would overcome initial self-doubt on an artificial turf field for the first time and bat 1 for 2 with a groundout and a hard hit line drive to right center before driving to Lake George to join the rest of the family.
Meanwhile, Nick and Christine had arranged for a very packed couple of days on Lake George.
On Wednesday, the Belascos (minus Chloe) went to the lake for parasailing. Chloe joined us for horseback riding. Chloe and Victoria were in their glory. After an hour, and before getting back to the car, Victoria turned to Christine and asked, “Can we do it again tomorrow?”. Of course she couldn’t, but we enjoy seeing her so happy and we are glad that the experience was available to us.
After the families reconvened at the house and ate a lunch, they travelled a little south to the town of Lake Luzerne for lazy river tubing in the Hudson River. We arrived at the business to be shuttled by bus to the river where they dropped us off upstream and drove the bus back downstream to pick us up. It is crazy to imagine that the river that we were floating in is the same river that separates NYC from NJ; it is just so calm and untouched. It is beautiful, actually.
The tubing proved to be fun, but the water was moving quickly and our trip was a bit briefer than we had expected. Each of us wished that is had been twice as long. One of the guides said that the morning rides had taken forever and they nearly had to push the tubes down the river, but the winds had shifted and accelerated our experience considerably.
Dinner Wednesday night would be at a restaurant on the Lake before we all retreated to the house to relax and rest by a comfy fire that was tended to by Nick.
Thursday morning was a bit stressful for Nick, who had called local boat rental businesses the day before to figure out the best means of obtaining a boat for the day. He found a place that had advised him to arrive an hour before they opened to assure himself of getting an hourly rental boat, because they only accepted reservations for daily rentals. So, he woke earlier than the rest of us, went to the marina, waited for an hour, and was then denied a boat because the owner of the marina had decided to only rent boats for the full day in an effort to maximize profits. So, off he went to another marina where he was lucky! They still had a boat available for the day and Nick immediately scooped it up. 90 minutes later we were on the water.
Nick did most of the driving while the kids tubed behind. Even Christine joined in on the fun.
The kids got to drive a little too while Keith took pictures and Julie and Christine enjoyed being on the water.
After the boating, everyone returned to the house for showers and an early dinner before driving through a tremendous amount of traffic and parking struggles to watch the fireworks from the middle of the lake while riding aboard the Minne-Ha-Ha, a Lake George icon. Victoria was a little anxious being on a larger vessel, but the fireworks proved to be excellent and we all had a wonderful time.
The following morning, Keith departed very early for work and everyone else had breakfast and packed up later in the day, bringing the shared family vacation to a close. With Brenna and Austin going to college next year, this might have been the one and only time that the families vacation like we did this year, but after talking about it for years, it finally happened.
We are glad and thankful that it did.