Chicago Road Trip: Part 4

Day 8:  Detroit, Michigan

After our stay in Chicago we headed to Detroit, which is about 4 hours away.  It was a fun part of the trip for us because we got to meet up with Daniel’s brother Nicolas who was working there for the summer, and also Daniel’s brother-in-law Tyson (he was working in Toronto and made the drive down).  The kids were excited to see their uncles. 

We met them for lunch in downtown Detroit at the famous Coney Island hot dog restaurants that are right next to each other.   These two places have been featured on Food Wars and on Man vs. Food, so it was cool to see them in real life.  We chose to go to the American Coney Island store.  I guess we’ll have to go back someday to try the Lafayette hot dogs and compare. 

Tristan and Oliver were pretty happy with their coney dogs.  I got a Greek salad with pita bread and also rice pudding (they have lots of good Greek food there) because hot dogs with lots of toppings on them make me nervous.   That is Daniel’s head in the bottom left of the picture.  He is trying to clean up the root beer that spilled everywhere when our waiter brought us our food and knocked over a full cup onto Daniel’s lap.  It was a rough start, but we recovered and still had a good lunch.

After lunch we drove across a bridge to Belle Isle, a little island park in the Detroit River in between Detroit and Canada.  Everyone thought it was fun to be able to see Canada across the river.  The kids ran around and played catch with Daniel and Nick.

The kids and Nick by a fancy fountain:

After we played around for awhile, we started to drive back to Detroit.  The plan was for us to drop Daniel and the boys off at the baseball game (Nick and Tyson were also going to the game with them), and then I would take the younger kids back to the hotel and get checked in and settled down for the night. 

As we were driving around the island, though, we saw a little beach area with a waterslide.  I thought it might be fun to take the younger kids swimming there, since there was not a pool back at the hotel and we were just going to be sitting there all evening (I didn’t really want to take the kids out exploring by myself in downtown Detroit).  We already had all our swimming stuff in the car, since we hadn’t unpacked yet.  We made a quick change of plans, and it worked out perfectly – Nick and Tyson took Daniel and the boys to the game, and I stayed on the island with our car so we could go swimming and then drive straight to our hotel from there. 

Here are Lizza, Rachel, and Henry in the Detroit River.  You can see downtown Detroit in the distance.

They had lots of fun playing in the sand and swimming around.  Rachel was the only one old enough to go down the waterslide.  She loved it and went down over and over again (later she decided that was one of her favorite parts of the whole trip).  Lizza and Henry were pretty jealous, but tried to be good sports. 

Here is a funny story about the waterslide:  The way it worked was you paid $3, and then you could go down the slide as many times as you wanted.  When we got in line for Rachel to enter the slide place, the lady who was supposed to take our money was on break.  The lifeguard measured Rachel to make sure she was tall enough, then gave her a wristband and said she could start sliding anyway, and we could just pay on our way out.  This seemed like a good plan.  She went down the slide several times.  When it was time to go, I went to give the lady at the booth our $3.  I told her about how Rachel had already been on the slide, and we just needed to pay before we left.  She looked at Rachel and said, “I don’t think she’s tall enough to go on the slide.  They shouldn’t have let her go.”  I said, “Oh, well.  I’m sorry if she’s not tall enough – they said she could go on it, so she did.  Here’s the 3 dollars.  We’re leaving now, so she won’t slide anymore.”  She said, “no way, I am not taking your money – she’s not tall enough go on the slide.”  I started over with my explanation about how Rachel had already been on the slide, we were leaving, we weren’t trying to go on the slide anymore at all, and I just really wanted to pay.  She didn’t care.  She kept shaking her head and putting up her hand and rolling her eyes and being like, “what part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”   We finally left, and Rachel just got all those rides for free.  If I had only known you didn’t have to pay if you’re too short to be allowed on the slide in the first place, I would have asked the lifeguard to please let Lizza and Henry go down, too.

Cindy was sleeping in the pack the whole time we were at the beach, so I don’t have any pictures of her there.  To make up for it, here is a picture of her taking a bath in the sink back at our hotel in Detroit:

And here are the other kids, all bathed and in pajamas and ready for bed.  I let them watch the Swan Princess on the laptop while I got Cynthia to sleep.  They thought that was pretty great.

Meanwhile, Daniel, Tristan, and Oliver were having a good time at the baseball game with Nick and Tyson. 

After the game they went to eat a super late dinner at Laikon Café, a really good Greek restaurant we had heard about.  I never knew Detroit was known for good Greek food.  That is the kind of fun thing you can learn on road trips. 

 

Day 9:  Cincinnati, Ohio and Newport, Kentucky

The next morning we packed up and drove about 6 hours to Cincinnati.  When we got there we stopped first in Fountain Square.

We all got ice-cream cones at Graeter’s.  I had never heard of this place before our trip, but these are two things I learned:  there was an article about it in the New York Times that said it "is considered by most connoisseurs to be the finest ice cream in the world."  Also, Oprah Winfrey says "You haven't had ice cream till you've had Graeter's.”  They might be right.  It was pretty good.

After our ice-cream we dropped the boys off at the stadium for their last baseball game of the trip.  Then we drove across the Ohio River to Newport, Kentucky, which is where our hotel was.  The only problem was that once we got there they didn’t have a room ready for us, and they said it might be a few hours. 

I decided it might be fun to try to walk out on one of the pedestrian bridges that connects Newport to downtown Cincinnati.  There was one that we could see from our hotel, and it seemed like it wasn’t too far away.  Ha!  It was much further away than it seemed.  We walked and walked and walked.  It was really hot, and the sun was beating down right on our faces the whole time.  I tried to convince the kids that we were having fun.  They weren’t sure if we were.  Finally we got to the bridge.  It’s official name is the Newport Southbank Bridge, but people call it the Purple People Bridge, because it is painted a lovely shade of purple (and it’s for people, not cars).  We walked about halfway out on it, where we had a great view of downtown Cincinnati.  We could even see the stadium where the boys were.  Rachel, Lizza, and Henry had fun throwing tiny pebbles off the bridge and watching for boats.  And posing for pictures.  Cynthia decided she’d had enough, and fell asleep. 

After the long walk back to our hotel, we finally were able to check into our room.  We had a window looking out on the Ohio River and the kids sat and watched all the boats and barges going by. 

Here are the boys at the baseball game.  They tried to enjoy it, but it was really hot, muggy, and sunny.  The Cincinnati Reds were playing the Cleveland Indians.  Ollie was rooting for the Indians, because that was his Little League team.  They won, and he was happy about that. 

After the game they walked over one of the bridges into Newport, and I went and picked them up.  We went to Chipotle for dinner.  We had thought about trying out some of the local Cincinnati restaurants, but we really just felt like having burritos. 

Here are Rachel and Lizza sleeping at our hotel in Newport.  It makes me laugh when kids bicker about not having enough space on a bed when they’re trying to fall asleep, and then somehow they always end up like this:

 

Day 10:  Nashville, Tennessee and Little Rock, Arkansas

The next day we had a long day of driving to get to Little Rock.  We stopped in Nashville on the way to see the Opryland Resort Hotel.  This place is so huge!  It has several atriums and indoor waterfalls and a little river with boats and fish.  We walked around for awhile just exploring.  There was a big Irish dance competition going on, and also some beauty pageants, so there were lots of dancers running everywhere and little girls with makeup and giant wigs.  It was funny. 

After we explored, we ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant inside the hotel.  It was good, but ridiculously expensive.  Daniel and I looked at each other when we got the bill, and both said, “Okay, we’re done eating out with the whole family for a long time.”

When we got to our hotel in Little Rock the kids wanted to go swimming one last time (especially the boys, because they hadn’t been able to go much because of the baseball games).  It was late, so I put Henry and Cynthia to bed, and then I headed down to the pool with the older four.  I’m glad I did – we had a really good time.  I’m not usually at the pool without the little ones, so it was fun to be able to get in with the kids and really play with them.  I taught them how to play Marco Polo, and we played that until everyone was tired. 

 

Day 11:  Home to Texas

We left Little Rock and headed for home.  It felt weird to be done with our trip – we had planned for it for so long, I think Daniel and I couldn’t believe we had actually done it, and now it was over.  We’d been in 17 different states and driven almost 4,000 miles.  We learned a lot - about our country and different cities and baseball, and also about our family (mostly that hauling six kids around the country can be a little stressful at times and we might not be as patient as we thought we were).  I’m glad we did it.  I hope when our kids are older they’ll look back and remember all the fun trips we did as a family. 

THE END!!!!!!

 

(see part 1 here, part 2 here, Eddie Vedder concert here, and part 3 here)