We had a quiet day after the train trip, slept in, laid around the house, Ally and I went to see Aunt Lue, the kids helped me work on my never ending Springsteen puzzle, and had a little swim after dinner. Sure did had a great time with these two and missed Elle a lot, the 5th member of our travel crew! After one last overnight, we finished the pandemic puzzle, hurray, and took Aidan and Ally to meet their mom halfway. Miss them already!
Month: June 2021
Winding Down our Train Trip
For the first time, I had a seatmate for a few hours. She got off in Little Rock and my fingers were crossed that no one took her place. I like my space! No such luck as an older man got the seat next. We both slept a little but it wasn’t comfortable at all. My neck was really stiff by morning. I amused myself by taking crappy nighttime photos out the window.
We made it through the night. Not much sleeping going on but we’re heading into the home stretch. Should arrive in Dallas in about 2.5 hours. 
After we passed through Longview, Miles texted and asked if there was a stop between “where you are now” and Dallas. I said yes, Mineola was next. He was wondering if Elle could get off there. I asked, “Oh, no, is she miserable?” I could just imagine she was texting her parents saying “get me off this train!” But he said no, not at all, he hadn’t even heard from her. He just thought it would be easier than driving all the way to Dallas and back. I said I would ask so I got up to find the conductor and presented the problem. He was very nice and said it was fine to do that but I couldn’t get off with her and she’d have to make her way to the terminal by herself. Elle was okay with that so I told Miles that she could get off there if they could pick her up. He said Sarah would come for her and would just barely make it around the same time that the train pulled in. Suddenly we had to pack Elle up and say goodbye, which was totally unexpected and not the way we thought the trip would end. But I know her parents wanted to see her and although she wanted to hang out with the rest of us, she was ready to get home too. When we got to Mineola, the conductor met us at the door and was nice enough to call out to the woman running the little train depot there that “this young lady is getting off by herself so please help her get to the right place to meet her parents.” The woman nodded and gestured toward Elle to come with her so I felt better about leaving her alone. I texted Sarah and she was almost there and texted Elle who said she was also texting her mom. I went back and moved to the seat by Ally for the rest of the trip. Not too much later, we made it into Dallas, whew! We certainly did not need our sweatshirts any more in the hot Texas sun.
What a great trip we had! We will all have lots of happy memories of time spent together, the good, the bad, the funny, the hilarious, the interesting, the silly, the excellent adventures!
Do Better, Amtrak!
Okay, our happy mood has its first test. The Texas Eagle was shortened during the pandemic and lost its observation car, where you could hang out at tables, play games, watch the scenery etc. We discovered this on our trip up. It’s still missing so we went to the cafe car to play a card game and were told we couldn’t stay, even though it’s totally empty. I asked what we were supposed to do for the duration of this trip and the only answer is to stay in our seats and complain to Amtrak because the crew agrees with us but “they don’t listen to us.” So I have tweeted at Amtrak and texted them, but no reply. We are fine and have things we can do, but part of the appeal of a train trip was to be able to hang out together, not just sit in our seats for 21 hours. Blah!
Rolling Along
The girls have been “vlogging” throughout the trip, giving little recaps of our activities. Wish I could upload some of their videos here–they are pretty cute. Anyway, they recorded one more story from the train and we headed back thru St. Louis on our way home. Spirits remain high with 15 hours to go! 
Springfield and beyond….and we are really glad we brought our own food this time!
Views from the Train
We have a different crew from the trip up and they don’t seem to care about announcing smoke breaks like the last one did. 
We were stopped at an intersection for at least 15 minutes, blocking traffic. People were getting out of their cars and wandering around, wondering what was going on. Later we heard there was a medical emergency on board and a passenger had to be taken off. Hopefully he/she is doing okay!
Goodbye, Chicago
This was the best trip ever!! We had such a great time, the kids loved everything about it and even the train ride up didn’t seem so bad in retrospect. They were all really sad to be going, but Grandpa and I decided it’s good to “leave them wanting more” instead of staying so long that they started to get weary or bored or missed home too much. 🙂 We went to our nearby Starbucks for a little consolation treat this morning, then walked over to Eataly to buy some provisions for the train, assuming that the dining car is still “out” and we’d be stuck with Rachel and her microwaved meals otherwise. We grabbed some Subway meals for “later,” planning to get fast food lunch at the train station. Then hung out in the hotel lobby for a little longer till we called a Lyft and made our way to the train station.
Got to the station in plenty of time, but OH MY GOSH, it is so much bigger than the Dallas station and we had NO idea where we were going. I had to ask two different people where to find our train. The station was packed and it was a confusing nightmare to get to the right waiting area. We no longer had time to grab some lunch without being worried we’d miss the train! Got boarded first, thankfully “family groups” are given a bit of priority so they can try to seat us together. Since we had our Subway sandwiches, we decided to go ahead and eat those for lunch and save our Eataly food for later….maybe even get some microwaved meals from the cafe car after all. haha
Dallas, here we come….
Shopping, Navy Pier, and Family
We went back to the mall we had passed the first night when it was closed…the kids wanted sweatshirts or other souvenirs to take home. We had to wait for the stores to open and then the girls couldn’t find a thing they liked. 🙂 Aidan got some sweatpants. The girls had seen a store at Navy Pier that had JUST the sweatshirts they wanted but, again, it was closed when we were there. I had told them if we couldn’t find anything they wanted in the stores near the hotel, we’d walk back over to Navy Pier. So….off we went.
It was a good little walk to the Pier and we saw a crazy guy swimming in the cold water! He did have a wetsuit on.
We had some lunch and then some “dragon’s breath cereal” for dessert. The girls found the sweatshirts they wanted and Aidan got a snow globe that his night manager had requested. We walked back to the rides and the girls were VERY excited to see that the swings they wanted to ride the other day were open this time. We had bought a “city pass” which allowed us a certain number of rides but the pass was only good for the previous two days. Rich was just going to buy the kids a ticket to ride the swings but I thought I would ask someone at the ticket counter if we could still use our pass since the ride was closed for high winds when we were there. The woman didn’t even let me finish my question before saying, “yes, go ahead, just tell them you have a pass!” Ally and Elle were very excited and Aidan less so, but he decided to ride as well. The girls loved it and wanted to go again, but I didn’t know if they could since we’d already used the pass. But the guy told them to come on so off they went for a second time, with Aidan sitting it out.
Later, we met up with my cousin Lisa, my cousin Bill and his wife Patt for a great dinner, lots of laughs and conversation. We never got to see our Chicago cousins much growing up but we still have a connection and enjoyed catching up! Bill is the son of my Aunt Cass, my dad’s sister. Lisa is kind of a long lost 1st cousin once removed–the biological daughter of my cousin Tish who had Lisa at a young age and gave her up for adoption. I don’t actually know the whole story except what I’ve heard from others but apparently after Lisa was grown up, she was able to find our family and has become close with the Chicago clan. I’d met her once before and we are kindred spirits in many ways–really glad she came out to see us! Some of my other cousins were going to come but sadly my cousin Cate’s long time partner Howard had just passed away and his funeral was the day we were meeting. We’d actually met Howard on one of our other trips to Chicago and he was a very nice man.
It was our last night in Chicago and we were already getting sad that we were going to have to leave! We all had such a great time and it was so much fun hanging out with the teenagers!
Millenium Park and The Bean
We couldn’t skip a trip to The Bean! The kids enjoyed posing!
We then wandered through the several parks that are connected to one another. Elle remembered Maggie Daly Park from a soccer trip a few years ago. She really wanted us to go find the huge playground, so we did. The signs said the equipment was for kids “12 and under.” Elle is 13 and Ally is 14 but I told them they could pretend they were 12. They tried the slides and ran around a little bit. Suddenly they were very glum, realizing that they had outgrown the playground scene. Elle said, “I feel like my childhood is over!” I think she had a slight existential crisis. The two of them sat on the grass and talked about how they were getting too grown up. Elle said the playground seemed “SO MUCH BIGGER” last time she was there. Bless their little hearts!
We walked around some more and they found a man selling light-up balloons. They both got one with their spending money and cheered up pretty quickly, then found some cotton candy, which made things even better!
From there we walked through a lovely garden till we came to the Sullivan Fountain, which was pretty awesome, too. After a very long day, we took a Lyft back to our hotel and crashed. 🙂
Navy Pier
The kids were very excited to go to Navy Pier! We had our Chicago Pass which allowed us a ride on the giant Ferris wheel as well as some additional rides. Elle was very nervous about the Ferris wheel and wasn’t sure if she wanted to get on it. We told her no biggie, she could skip it if she didn’t want to ride. With some encouragement from her cousins, she decided she would give it a try….and of course she ended up loving it.
Next they wanted to ride on some swings that whip you around in a circle but it was closed due to high winds. We thought it was a little odd that this ride was closed but the Ferris wheel was not…??? We did ride the carousel; well, the females did. The males were too cool for that.
After wandering around a bit more, we decided to eat at Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” restaurant on the grounds. First off I went to use the bathroom and was directed to the back of the bar by some workmen who were hanging lights on the ceiling. There was no one in the bar but I guess it was not open yet. I used the toilet, thankfully only #1, flushed, turned my back on the potty while I washed my hands, kept hearing water running, turned around, and the toilet was spewing water up into the air! OMG! It totally freaked me out. I jiggled the handle hard and it finally stopped. There was water everywhere! I came out and told the workmen I was really sorry that apparently that toilet is not working properly and I caused a flood in the restroom. They looked at me and one of them said, “oh, yeah, you’re not supposed to go in there!” I said “that’s where you sent me!” They basically just looked away and I sheepishly headed back into the restaurant to tell the rest of our group what I had done. They got a good laugh about that!
When we finished dinner (and laughing), we thought we’d walk to Millennium Park and the famous “Bean.”
Architectural Boat Tour
After our shopping morning, we walked back to the hotel to meet up with the guys and head for the pier for our previously arranged architectural boat tour. Rich and I were very interested in doing this activity and I think the kids were sorta “blah” about it but were humoring us. Once we got going, they loved it and it ended up being almost everyone’s favorite thing we did. Our guide was fun and engaging and told us lots of facts about various architects, architectural styles, and the evolution of Chicago architecture over the decades. After the big Chicago fire, the whole direction of city planning and building changed into something more progressive and dynamic.
It was a little breezy but sunny and nice outside. The kids were very attentive and learned a lot. We all especially liked the “city within a city” where people’s cars had to be valet parked backwards so the cars wouldn’t go off the edge (with or without people in them) into the river!
Postcards from Retirement 