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Hotel

Day 5 began with breakfast in the hotel lobby. My parents took the kids down to breakfast so that my wife and I could sleep longer, which was very nice. Beta stayed in my parents’ room overnight, but Alpha was in our room. Since the rooms were adjoining and since we had to get the baby up and give him to them, we couldn’t really sleep. So we joined them all in the breakfast room.

After breakfast, we were trying to finalize the day’s plans. I showed Alpha and Beta the tourist-brochure stand, with about a hundred different pamphlets about things to do in the area. They both wanted almost all of them, so I had to set a limit on how many they could take. But that kept them occupied in the car.

Museum

Our first, and main, stop for the day was the Museum of Science and Industry. The drive into Chicago from Schaumburg took a bit, maybe an hour or so. Construction was bad in some spots, but it was alright. We drove right to the museum and parked in their underground lot.

The museum is large. I was impressed by the size of the areas, since they have whole airplanes suspended from their ceiling. That was in the industry section.

The science section was equally large. They had a tornado generator that took up most of the height of the room. And they had a Van de Graaf generator to produce huge sparks of lightning. That was suspended way up high, probably so that no one gets electrocuted. It was very noisy, to the point of hurting my ears (which isn’t too hard to do, despite my children’s attempts to deafen me).

And just when I thought the industry and science rooms were large, we visited the U-505 exhibit. A whole submarine was in that room. They had the sub and a bunch of exhibits about WW-II in general, the US effort to capture a German sub, and various aspects about submarine life. The U-505 alone was worth the price of admission. I think the museum knows that, because they charge extra for it.

One of the interesting exhibits was the life-size model of the sub’s kitchen. At first, I thought it was a scale model of the kitchen. But no, it was really that small.

Park

After paying for the parking at the museum and leaving, we drove to the park a couple miles away and parked in the underground garage. Paying for parking seems to be one of the necessary evils of being in Chicago.

It was a hot and foggy day:

We wandered around for a little while, going along a nice little riverwalk/scenic gardens. We went past the amphitheater thingy and found the silver/mirrored giant jellybean. The kids liked looking at that for about two minutes, then they wandered aimlessly while we adults took pictures and stuff. We headed over to the picture fountains, which the kids liked much more than the jellybean, probably because it changed and it involved water. But we were not prepared to let the kids get wet, so we moved on to try to find Buckingham Fountain because it was supposed to be scenic.

We never did make it to the fountain. We went a block or so, then decided that it was too hot and too late in the day and we should just go to dinner. So we payed for parking and left Chicago to go to dinner in Schaumburg.

It took slightly over two hours to drive the 38 miles. Thankfully, most everyone (except for me and Alpha) took a nap on the drive. I say thankfully because that meant the kids weren’t fussing because it took so long. I was not thankful that I didn’t get to take a nap. It wouldn’t have been too bad except for construction on I-290.

Dinner at Rainforest Cafe was a relaxing way to end the day because there were plenty of things to occupy the kids while we waited for our food. Then we had a short drive back to the hotel for bed.

Stay tuned for Day 6, the dramatic finale of our May Break trip recap.

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Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Iargo Springs

There were some springs near the cabin, and we heard that we had to go see them on our trip. So one morning (it was good for us to get out of the cabin in the morning because our kids woke up around 7 or 8 but the teenagers (and some other adults) would sleep until 10 or 11 so we felt bad that we were being noisy and figured we might as well get out of the house and go see something interesting) we headed to the springs.

The first thing we saw when we got to Iargo Springs was a very nice view of the Au Sable river, into which the springs fed:

The next thing we noticed was the stairs going down to the springs and river. There were a lot of stairs, and at the bottom was a nice boardwalk. The boardwalk went in a lot of directions, as there were a couple of springs and a lot of little creeks and waterways flowing from the springs to the main river. The boardwalk was mostly railingless, which was nice because the boys could hop off and explore whenever they wanted.

We went to the springs and the boys put their feet in the water. The main thing to know about spring water, other than it goes well into plastic bottles, is that it is extremely cold. It was a hot day, so the older boys enjoyed dipping their feet in the water, but not for very long. I tried it, and after about 30 seconds my feet were hurting; when I got out of the water the sensation was similar to the pins-and-needles feeling when my foot falls asleep. And when we put Gamma into the water so that he could enjoy the refreshing coolness, he started crying. We took him out. Don’t worry, the creeks were only ankle deep.

Alpha and Beta liked hiking alongside the boardwalk, seeing what branches they could find:

Gamma was more cautious, staying on the boardwalk. Although he did like to climb railings (in the few places where there were railings)

The nice thing about the springs is that there are a lot of trees so it stays cool. The bad thing about the springs is that it stays damp, so the mosquitoes like it there too. The other bad thing is that there are a lot of stairs. After the trip down the stairs, I wondered how many there were. So on the way back up (with Gamma on my back – now that’s a workout) I counted the stairs: 290 (give or take 10).

Conclusion

The rest of the trip included playing in the lake, watching a DVD or two (old-school cartoons mostly – 1950s-ish), and going to the local fireworks display on the 4th. Overall, it was a success.

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Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Now that you are familiar with our cabin, let me tell you about some of the things that happened on our trip.

Roasting Hot Dogs

One of the requirements when you go to a cabin is that you must have a fire pit or bonfire and you must roast hot dogs over that fire for at least one meal. We complied, and the kids picked up a new skill: not holding the roasting fork.

They learned that one from the older boys in the group. Laziness is the mother of invention, right? Okay, maybe it wasn’t laziness, since they were complaining that the fire was too hot. But what’s a campfire without something getting singed?

Now I know why the past tense of “sing” is “sang”.

Free Bat Picture

We went to a local monument thing that had a display about bats.

Yes, it is a picture of a free bat. It is also a free picture of a bat.

What makes it a free picture? There’s no copyright!

It does have a copywrite, but my sources say that “copywrite” is not a legal term and has no standing in the courts.

I was going to title this one “Spelling for Lawyers”, in tribute to the site Typography for Lawyers. But I doubt that lawyers wrote that sign. “Spelling for Signmakers” also wouldn’t work, because I doubt the signmaker designed the thing. And “Spelling for Whoever Designed the Sign” is too long for a title. So you got “Free Bat Picture” instead.

Local Hazards

My kids wore sandals (or equivalent footwear) most of the time. One afternoon though, Beta was playing on the deck barefoot.

My wife, to Beta: “What’s stuck to the bottom of your foot?”
Me, after poking the small gooey black glob: “It is sticky…looks like a piece of tar or something.”

Then the black glob moved.

Then I saw that it was alive.

Wife, to one of the older boys who was there: “Hey Andrew, what did you do with that leech you had earlier?”
Andrew: “We just flicked it off my leg. I don’t know where it went.”
Me: “I think we found it.”

We learned that leeches can survive on wooden decks for at least a half hour.

I don’t recall ever having seen a leech in real life. Movies, yes. Pictures, yes. Real life, now yes. I told Beta that a leech is just a bug that’s like a mosquito; he seemed satisfied with that explanation.

Alpha was interested in watching, and Beta had no choice in the matter, so the three of use watched the leech’s reaction as my wife poured salt on it. The leech was quite animated for a few seconds, then it stopped moving. It didn’t let go of Beta’s foot; I had to peel/pry it off still.

At least it didn’t bleed once it came off – unlike Andrew’s leg which kept bleeding and bleeding after he removed the leech without killing it first. And after I removed the leech, I tossed it into the shrubbery where people do not walk.

Alas, I was not a good blogger and did not run and get my camera to document the leech. So you do not get any photos of the leech. It was only as big as a three grains of rice (cooked), and the whole ordeal took about one minute (from discovery to being pronounced clean), so you’re not missing much.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of the Up North series, coming next week.

We interrupt the saga of our trip to Wisconsin/Chicago for the saga of our trip up north.

Click on a picture for a larger version.

For the 4th of July extended weekend, we travelled a few hours north to a cabin. A friend of ours invited us, and a few other people, to the family lakefront property. It is surrounded by a national forest, so there was no cell phone reception for me, nor was there any internet. And, although it had electricity and plumbing, it did not have air conditioning. No air, and it was in the 90s on the days we were there. And we slept in the upstairs bedrooms – where all the heat went when it rose.

We saw a few things while we were at the cabin:

a bald eagle, drifting through the sky (because he was on vacation too):

a sunset, over the lake (as they are meant to be):

and a squirrel, in the cabin (as they are not meant to be):

For those of you concerned for the squirrel’s welfare, considering that he is perched above an operating ceiling fan in this photo: you’re too late. No, the fan didn’t get him – something else did. I don’t know what exactly did him in, but he is taxidermied and that is his permanent pose on the ceiling of the cabin.

There’s also an owl perched on a rafter, several deer on the walls, a wolverine on a platform, and a jackelope on the wall. My main regret about the weekend is that I forgot to get a picture of the jackelope.

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Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Driving

We left the Dells just after 11:00 local time, which was noon Chicago time. I started driving, and people started dozing off. Except Alpha. He and I stayed awake. I had a supply of snacks to help keep me awake. I needed it, too. To avoid the toll roads, we took the scenic back roads. Wisconsin was all freeway; the toll roads started just after crossing into Illinois.

From Rockton to Schaumburg, we were on 2-lane highways. We went through a few small towns, some stoplights, and lots of farmland.

My view was mostly this:

Or this:

I think we took Rockton Rd to Co. Rd 8. Then in Harvard we took US-14 South and stayed on that through Woodstock and Crystal Lake. Then the GPS told us to take the S. Virginia Rd bypass down to 31 and take that to Algonquin. In Algonquin, we turned onto Algonquin Rd (AKA US-62). We took that for a while, going through the Barrington area (right by Willow Creek church). Shortly after that we turned onto N. Roselle Rd and took that south to Schaumburg and to our hotel.

It added about 20-30 minutes of drive time, but we save a few dollars and much exasperation by avoiding the toll booths.

Arriving

We were staying in Schaumburg instead of downtown Chicago because Chicago is ridiculously expensive. We knew we wanted to stay in a suburb of Chicago, and we knew we wanted to visit a Lego store while we were in Chicago. Which place fits both criteria? Schaumburg does.

We arrived at the hotel and my parents were already there, waiting for us. They had checked in, so we unloaded our van while the boys ran around wildly and tried to tell Nana everything about Wisconsin in about 30 seconds.

After a brief discussion of the day’s plans (summary: go to the Lego store, go to dinner, go to bed) we all piled in our minivan and headed to the Lego store.

Legoland Discovery Center/Centre

I had thought that the Lego store was a store that sold Legos, so I was surprised when my wife told me how much admission was. It turns out that it is not just a Lego store – it is a Legoland Discovery Center (that happens to have a store too). It think the total was $80-some for the 7 of us, and that was after the coupon and discounts.

There was a life-size giraffe outside the front entrance, and then in the foyer area there was a life-size old man sitting on a bench. Then there’s a larger-than-life face of Einstein after the foyer area. Then we started the tour. It’s not a guided tour – you just walk around the place and look at the hundreds of creations made out of Lego. It was fascinating and inspiring, and Alpha and Beta had the biggest grins on their faces so it was worth it.

There was a jungle area:

And a Star Wars area:

But before all that, as soon as you start the tour, is the scale version of the city of Chicago:

And if you look very closely at the top of the Sears tower (which stands about 6 feet high), you can see that either Batman got the wrong Gotham City or Darth Vader got the wrong galaxy:

I couldn’t zoom in close enough to see exactly who that masked man was.

After a while of looking at everything that the official Lego people made, we found the play area. There was a ride, a 4-D movie (falling snow was the extra dimension), and tubs and tubs of Lego bricks. Kids could play and build to their hearts’ content. The place even had a couple of long ramps so that you could test your vehicles (assumed to be racecars).

After finishing that, we continued on the tour. It turns out that the next stop on the tour was the last: the store. Of course, with the kids having been exposed to Lego stuff for the last hour or two, they wanted to buy most everything in the store. Except Gamma – he didn’t want to buy anything. But he did want to take the boxes off the shelves, shake them, then throw them on the floor.

We escaped having bought only two small sets.

Then we went to dinner, back to the hotel, and to bed. Alpha and Beta were going to stay in my parents’ room. Kind of like a sleepover, except we had adjoining rooms so it wasn’t that far.

Then there was evening and morning. And Day 5 will be covered in another blog post, coming soon.

Continuation of a previous post

Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Breakfast

This was our last day in Wisconsin Dells. Check-out was 11:00, so we had to do everything we wanted by 11.

We started by going out to breakfast. Not just any place, but a touristy place: Paul Bunyan Lumberjack Meals. Paul Bunyan seems to be a popular tourist attraction all over the US.

And anything with the name Paul Bunyan is required by zoning laws to have a giant statue out front. The blue ox is optional. This restaurant has its blue ox inside the building. If I remember correctly, it was just the head mounted on the wall. Apparently some hunters mistook it for game.

I really liked this place. Why?

• First of all, you pay ahead of time. The cashier takes your money and then you get seated. They can do that because
• there are no menus. It’s all-you-can-eat breakfast. They bring out doughnuts, eggs, ham, pancakes, potatoes, and sausage. That’s what you get, and that means
• there is no waiting. The waiter (I should be calling him a server because, like I said, there was no waiting) just started bringing out food once we were seated. No orders to take, no problems with mixed up plates. It must be a nice place to be a server. And because there were no orders,
• there is no bill. Since you paid up front, once you’re done you just get up and leave. You don’t have to wait for the guy to come around, bring you your bill, take the bill back, and bring you your change (or credit card back). This is especially helpful for families with children. Okaaaay. We’re all done… where is the bill? We are ready to leeeaaaave. None of that here.
• And for the engineer in me: The price involves a formula. Kids are charged $0.75 per year of age. I appreciated the fact that Beta did not cost as much as Alpha, since Beta is smaller. I think Gamma was free.

Pool

After breakfast, we had an hour or two to play at the pool. My very organized wife had arranged the packing the night before, so the suitcases were all ready to be loaded in the van. All we had to do this morning was change into swimsuits, go swimming, and then change back into civilians clothes by 11:00.

The slides were fun, then Alpha wanted to ride the Hurricane again before we left.

Okay, I thought, we should have time to do that.

There were a lot more people today than any of the other days. That meant that there were a lot more people who wanted to ride the Hurricane today. We spent a lot of time in line. By the time we got out of the Hurricane the first time, it was 11:05.

Oh boy, we’re late.

“Sorry, but we don’t have time to go a second time.” I told Alpha. We hurried over to our table, where I was glad to see that the rest of the family was not still waiting for us. That meant that they went back to the room and handled check-out so that we were not charged another day.

The hotel has a policy of unlocking the room doors and leaving the doors wide open at check-out time. My wife said that she got back to the room right at 11:00 and the door was open and all our stuff was available for the taking.

They don’t mess around there.

Everyone was frustrated for the next 15 minutes as we were trying to get everything out the door but things kept happening like kids’ losing their shoes and forgetting what they were supposed to be doing.

But we eventually made it out to the van and I think we did not leave anything behind. Then we drove to Chicago, but I’ll save that for the next blog post.

Lessons

We learned a couple of things on this vacation to Wisconsin Dells.

• Always go through the camera after a young child has been handling it. Otherwise you end up with a lot of space occupied by odd photos. Mostly just whatever happens to be at his eye level. Of course, we knew this before, but this gives me a chance to actually use one of the photos, as evidence.
• Do not let your toddler take anything out on the balcony. We were on the third floor, and I had to go rescue some socks that ended up on the ground, thanks to Gamma.
• The balcony railings are narrow enough to prevent most heads from squeezing between them. Gamma, on a couple of occasions, felt like demonstrating that he could fit his head between the rails. He could not so easily bring his head back out though. No permanent damage, and I think he learned his lesson.

Continuation of a previous post

Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Duck Races

The pools at the hotel didn’t open right away in the morning. But at the middle pool, Klondike Kavern, they had a duck race (the “Ken-Ducky Derby”) for the kids a half hour before the pool opened. Klondike Kavern had the race because it has the lazy river feature, which the other pools do not have.

The duck race works like this:

• Each child chooses a small rubber ducky and a staff member writes his name on it
• The starter staff member dumps all the ducks at once in the lazy river
• The finish-line staff member waits about 30 feet down the lazy river and grabs the first 3 ducks to reach him. Those are the winners.

They ran about four races, and each of our kids had a duck, so we ended up winning twice. The prizes were all the same, I think – plastic duck calls.

Duck Tour 1

We decided the night before that we should go on the duck tour. Otherwise, our trip to Wisconsin Dells would not be complete. The Tommy Bartlett show would have been fun to watch, but they hadn’t opened for the season yet. There were some other things, but we were planning on stopping at the museum and aquarium in Chicago on our way back home, so we didn’t look at anything museumish or aquariumish (or zooish).

That left waterparks (been there) or hiking (done that) or the duck tours. The first one we saw, brochure-wise, was the Original WWII Dells Army Ducks. So we decided to go there. I pulled into the parking lot. It looked rather sparse, but it was the off-peak season. My wife got out and asked the ticket booth about times and availability.

She came back shaking her head. “They are running only at noon and 3:00“. If I were running a place with the word “Army” in it, then all times would be in military format: 1200 and 1500, not noon and 3. It was only 10:10. We didn’t have any other plans to fill almost two hours of waiting, so we drove to the other duck tour place.

Duck Tour 2

It turns out that they are also original – the Original Wisconsin Ducks. It was my turn to get out and walk to the ticket booth and ask about times and availabilities. So that’s what I did.

The lady there said they ran every half hour. Every half hour? No waiting? By the time we got the kids out of the van and loaded into the duck, that would use most of that half hour. “I’ll be right back, with the family” I told her.

Now they said they ran every half hour. The key part of that is “said”. They didn’t start for about 45 minutes. I think they meant that the tours are scheduled for every half hour, or they would like to run every half hour, or they’ll run every half hour that there are enough people. But it was a little misleading to say they ran every half hour. Because I’m sure if no one was on board, they would not take out the duck.

The duck tour itself was 1 hour long. It was a nice warm day, the breeze was blowing gently in our faces and the engine was humming along. It was a good way to spend an hour. Gamma napped for about 50 of the 60 minutes. It’s okay because his ticket was free.

Here is my view during the land part of the tour:

And here is my view during the water part of the tour:

Of course, that was the straight-ahead view. Most of the time I was looking out one side or the other.

Note: take a few dollars cash because the drivers do take (and ask for in a roundabout way) tips. I did not bring any cash on the duck tour, otherwise I probably would have given him a tip. So, Pat, the duck tour driver who attends University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse and plays football there, don’t take it personally that I didn’t leave you a tip. You did a fine job, but all I had was my credit card and you were not getting that.

Side Note: the duck tour place is across the street from Mt. Olympus. That is a water park/theme park/resort thingy. It is noteworthy because of the Trojan horse. It is about 5 or 6 stories high and is a fairly accurate replica, at least if all the drawings I’ve seen are close. It is, I think, the one item that represents how touristy the area is.

The website’s description of the horse is amusing: “the horse, where brave men once lay in wait to attack the Trojans“. Makes it sound like they have the original.

Duck!

The afternoon and evening were spent in the pools and playland. I already posted some pictures of the pools, so this post will contain pictures of the playland.

The playland was next to the arcade and was in the section close to our room. The playland was a large version of the play areas that are not uncommon in certain restaurants or as stand-alone businesses – kids climb up stairs and cushioned passageways and everything has netting around it to prevent escapes.

But this one had a large open area in the middle. And that area contained hundreds of foam balls. And it contained hoses and blowers and compressed air and switches.

The kids could load the balls into a cannon and shoot them across the room. The second story of this place had several air cannons, spaced around a circle. And you could aim them. Put a ball in the side, aim the cannon, press the red button on the end, and the ball would fly fairly accurately across the structure. Some of the cannons were larger and could handle multiple balls at once, if you wanted to get all MIRV-y on people.

Most of the foam balls were on the ground floor. The kids started by picking up as many as they could and taking them up to the second story (there were no “shooters” on the ground floor – only fixed cannons that aimed up) Eventually they discovered that there were a few “stoves” that just blew the foam balls up to the second story. But it kept them busy and they were usually upset only when we had to leave.

The playland was nice because the kids didn’t require constant attention, like they did at the pool. We could sit and watch them. We could relax (and not worry about swimming skills) and they could have fun.