We had a great crossing of Lake Michigan (see our crossing video). There were some swells, but we only started seeing waves when we approached the harbour. What a beautiful day! When we were getting close, Heather started smelling a burnt-like smell. She was sniffing around the boat down below and Cam was also sniffing around on the bridge for the source of the smell when he noticed the Chicago skyline. It was quite large, but shrouded in a haze and we realized that we actually smelled Chicago before we could see it! We got to Monroe Harbor and found our mooring ball, but it had no line attached to it. We had caught mooring balls in the BVIs but they always had a line and we couldn’t figure out what to do with this one. Cam radioed the harbor and someone came over and helped us tie up. He explained that it was too expensive to add lines to the balls that didn’t have them anymore and that we should back up to the ball, loop our lines through, and then walk the lines forward to secure them to our bow! Go figure!
Karen and Rob, from “Off Leash” had already arrived and they invited us to join them on the Architectural River Cruise. We were pretty tired from the run across Lake Michigan, but Carpe Diem! We had purchased 3-attraction “Go City” passes, which gave us a bit of a break on the excursion costs. Our River Cruise guide was terrific and the boat had only about 30-40 guests, so it was a great tour. Some of it is covered in our video on Crossing Lake Michigan. The history of Chicago, its architecture, its architects, and the sights were so interesting. In fact, the buildings all had unique structural ways of dealing with the wind and swaying. Chicago was designed around the river and unlike most cities with rivers, the architecture faces the river and even mimics its shape and colours. It was quite fascinating. After the Chicago fire of 1871, they were able to rebuild the city with great planning and have continued to do so. After our tour, we walked to Lou Malnati’s where everyone but Heather had Chicago style deep dish pizza. It looked and tasted delicious! Sometimes it’s very hard being gluten free! We were facing a 25 minute walk home with creepy tunnels in the dark, so we did the tourist thing and took a bicycle taxi home for $15 each. It was not a bad ride, but he took some side walks, some roads, and the traffic lights were simply suggestions, which made it exciting, one might say! Looking out at the skyline that night was surreal! It was the anniversary of 9-11 while we were there and one of the buildings had adjusted the office lights to display “NEVER FORGET”. It was very moving.
We had a Cummins service technician come to the boat for a whole day. It was a very useful service/tune up but it sucked up a beautiful day in Chicago. Dan, a colleague of Cam’s through a business association, caught the tender over to our boat and we enjoyed a nice visit with him for a couple of hours. Later that night, we joined Maggie and Bruce from Currently for dinner at Shaw’s Crab House. It was a terrific night out with great food and great company!
We did the Hop-on, Hop-off city tour. It was pretty good as you had the option to get off and on as you pleased. The commentary was pre-recorded and you used headsets to tune in so it wasn’t as entertaining as the River Cruise in that respect. Don't believe the rumours you've heard about Mrs O'Leary's cow and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Imagine shouldering the blame for that fire for the rest of her life. Along the tour route you will find the Bean, which is actually in walking distance of Monroe Harbor. We walked around the Bean, actually the Cloud Gate, and got our funny warped photos. We also enjoyed the shade under the Bean as it was a very hot day. We walked through Millennium Park and particularly enjoyed the Crown Fountain. The fountain is actually two large black LED video towers that face each other. Water pours out of the moving images and the mist from the water is blown around. On this very hot day we enjoyed some refreshing mist as it blew our way. We exited the bus tour at the Riverwalk and studied the boats going under the Michigan Avenue bridge. We took the opportunity to speak to a tour boat captain about the bridge heights as research for our run through the downtown on our own boat.
The next day was miserable with rain all day and we felt trapped on our boat, floating and bouncing in Monroe Harbor. As soon as the rain cleared, we called the tender so we could get off the boat. After escaping from our boat, we enjoyed a leisurely walk to DuSable Marina and then stopped to say good bye to Maggie and Bruce on Currently. While we were there, they had friends show up for dinner and they insisted that we join them as well. It felt a bit awkward but our hosts were very welcoming and we enjoyed meeting the crew of Let Time Go Lightly. After dinner, we walked over to DuSable and met Richard and Kathy from See Life. See Life was a beautiful Selene and we enjoyed a drink and a tour with them. We also loved our visit with their dog, Magnolia!
We used our third attraction pass and went to see the Adler Planetarium. That was definitely a worthwhile stop. Later that evening, we followed their suggestion, and looked into the night sky with our binoculars. We saw Jupiter with several of her moons, and Saturn with a hint of her rings! Very cool! Our last day was spent preparing our boat and Karen and Rob's boat Off Leash to be low enough to traverse the rivers through downtown Chicago. We are ready to leave the Great Lakes now. Chicago was a fantastic end to our tour of Lake Michigan.
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