Chicago Road Trip: Part 1

 

So, remember last year, when we got back from this trip, and I said Daniel was planning “one last grand finale road trip”, and it was going to be crazy?”  Well, we did it!  It might take a few posts to document it.

But first I will explain how all our road-tripping came to be.  Our first one was back in 2009.  We were driving to Florida to visit my sister and her family in Miami.  Instead of just driving straight there and back we decided it would be fun to turn it into a “Gulf Coast Road Trip”, and try to hit all the states we could along the way.  This is what our route looked like:

We had so much fun on that trip, that the next year we decided to do it again.  Only this time, we wanted to see all the states in the area above our Gulf Coast trip.  That was our Great Smoky Mountain Road Trip, and it looked like this:

We had figured that while we’re living in Texas, we want to be able to see as much as the eastern half of the country as possible.  On our drive home from last year’s trip, Daniel started getting wild ideas about one last big road trip, bigger than anything we’d attempted before.  When we got home, he started mapping it out on the map on our kitchen table.  We decided it would be fun to make it a baseball trip;  Daniel and I spent a few nights looking at all the major league baseball schedules, trying to coordinate the states we’d be in with baseball games in certain cities.  Once we’d settled on the perfect time to go (the end of June, which would allow for 5 MLB games along the way), we started planning for the rest of it.  We had so much fun planning this one!  We spent night after night, looking up different cities, researching things to do and places to eat.  Daniel created an awesome spreadsheet that we put everything into.  Anyway, here’s what we did:

I told you it was crazy!  It was an eleven day trip.  We spent one night in Derby, KS; one night in Kansas City, MO; one night in Fargo, ND; one night in Minneapolis, MN; three nights in Chicago, IL; one night in Detroit, MI; one night in Cincinnati, OH; and one night in Little Rock, AR.  Plus there were some other fun cities we stopped in along the way, but didn’t spend the night.  I think we drove in 17 different states.

Here we have Cynthia practicing her best “road trip” faces (the first day was rough while she figured out how to sleep in her carseat, but after that she was a great traveler).  Henry and Lizza are studying the maps and trying to figure out where the heck we’re going.

Day 1:  Derby, Kansas

Our first stop was my sister’s house in Derby, which is just outside of Wichita.  We got there pretty late and put the kids right to bed, but in the morning they were happy to see their cousins and get some playing time in before we left.

All the cousins together (minus my sister’s new baby, who was still sleeping):

More cousin fun:

Henry’s favorite part about Kansas:

My brother-in-law showed it to him and let him sit on it, and we could not keep him in the house after that – he kept sneaking out to try to ride it.

 

Day 2:  Kansas City, Missouri

Our next stop, and first official baseball city, was Kansas City, Missouri.  Some friends of ours from grad school who are living in Iowa drove down and met us there for the day. 

We started out by eating lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s (the first of many Man vs. Food stops on this trip).  The line was super long (by the time we left, the line just to get into the restaurant was outside and wrapped around the building), but the food was worth the wait.  Oklahoma Joe’s is famous for something called “burnt ends”, and Ollie had seen all about it on the Travel Channel, so that’s what he ordered, and it ended up being his favorite meal of the whole trip.

After lunch we drove into downtown Kansas City and then walked around and saw some of the different fountains.  I guess Kansas City is called the “City of Fountains” because they have so many.  I never knew that before.  To be honest, I don’t know if I even knew Kansas City existed before this trip, though.  It was not a city I had ever thought about before. 

They had one fountain area in the middle of the city where lots of kids play.  It was very slippery and dangerous and there was lots of running into each other and several wipeouts.  Still fun, though.

After the fountains, we dropped off the boys (minus Henry) at the baseball game, and the rest of us went to our hotel for swimming and dinner.

The guys at the game (Kansas City Royals vs. Cubs):

Day 3: Independence, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; and Fargo, North Dakota

Before we left Missouri, we stopped in both Independence and Liberty to go to the visitor centers there. 

Then we were on our way north.  It was a stressful day of driving.  The Missouri river was really flooded, and even covering the road in several areas, so we had to take a few long detours.  We’ve been having a record drought in Texas, so it was crazy to see this much water everywhere.

On a restaurant patio in Omaha, Nebraska:

We finally made it past all the flooding, and were on our way to Fargo to spend the night.  There was nothing really special that we wanted to see in Fargo – we just wanted to cross North Dakota off our list of states we’ve been in.  One thing I remember about Fargo is how light it was – we got there after 9:00 at night, and it was still light outside.  The kids were happy to finally get to our hotel.  Cynthia especially went crazy at all the hotels on this trip – she loved exploring. 

And the older kids enjoyed the continental breakfast the next morning, as usual.  This is always one of their favorite parts of a road trip.

Well, that’s it for part one – next up, Minneapolis.