dannykuconn
Cheerman of Board
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 376
- Reaction Score
- 6,712
It contains too many things to see in a day, or mention in a short space, but in addition to the usual suspects, it houses Sue, the best preserved tyrannosaurus Rex fossil. We saw an informative 3-D movie about Egypt and the discovery of the tombs of the pharaohs. We watch scientists extracting DNA to study the genomes. There is a special exhibit on China covering a substantial portion of the rich history.
After the museum we went to lunch. Phil said he selected the lunch place, but he wouldn’t tell me anything about it. One small challenges it is on the lower level. Many people visit Chicago and don’t realize there is a network of roads at a lower level below the main street level. The challenge is that, as we become reliant on GPS, and punch and address into the system and blindly follow it we end up wherever it sends us. Either Google hasn’t figured out that there is a lower level or we don’t know how to tell it that there’s a low-level. The GPS triumphantly announced that “we had arrived”, but we were on the main level. We drove around a bit, but finally parked and started walking. There’s a stairway that goes down from Michigan Avenue. When you get down there, it is dark and dank, and most of what you see is loading docks for the basements of the various buildings. It doesn’t look like someplace you’re actually supposed to be walking around. We walked about three blocks and then turned into the famous Billy Goat Tavern. Phil ordered a double “cheeburger” but made the mistake of trying to add an order of fries. The waitress retorted, “no fries, chips”.
Then we returned to the main street level to look at the facade of the Wrigley building (built for the gum company). Embedded in the façade are 149 rocks, but these aren’t ordinary rocks. Each of them came from a well-known building. As examples, there is a piece of the Parthenon, a piece of the Great Wall of China, a chunk of rock taken from the inner wall of the White House, Mount McKinley, a piece of Notre Dame (the cathedral not the basketball team) and many more.
It was still too early to head over to DePaul, so we headed in that direction and stopped at Lincoln Park. Did I mention that it was snowing? Not hard, but the day was a little too raw for a pleasant walk in the park. Luckily, a few hundred feet away we came across the Lincoln Park Conservatory, and enclosed building with hundreds of plants including tropical palms and ancient ferns. The good news is that they kept it warmer than the outside. The bad news is they kept it a lot warmer. Plus it was moist; the water was literally dripping off the ceiling. One of the employees was a very chatty type, and filled us in on the details of the sausage tree, and how they had to pollinate it, and what it was like in the 70s when the orchid room was a favorite hangout for hippies who like to smoke up a storm. The sign promised a flower show and train show. The flowers and trees were quite impressive, but the train show didn’t live up to the name.
After the conservatory we walked over to Lincoln Park zoo. Some of the large animals were out of sight but a jaguar happened to walk out and loudly announce its presence while we were walking by.
Then we headed over to the arena for the basketball game. We were there before the doors opened so we walked over to the student arena where we bumped into some UConn fans, originally from Connecticut but now living in Dallas. One of them work for American Airlines so they managed to get free airfare to Chicago. We sorry young girl wearing a UConn shirt with the number three on it. Turned out to be one of many of Morgan Tucks relatives. I pose for a picture with her, but her younger sister was too shy at the time. A few more UConn fans came wandering in so we stopped to chat.
Then it was time for the game. It was exciting, you may have heard about it.
After the game, we hung around for a while hoping that some of the players would come out. Phil talk to Lou’s sister Bonnie while I talked to their mom. We sat next to other members of Morgan’s family. Before the players came out, the security staff assured us out of the arena but let us go into the foyer area. Morgan Tuck, Moriah Jefferson, Lou Samuelson, and Courtney Eckmark came out to see family members and pose for pictures and signed my jersey.
Next, we headed for dinner. Chicago is famous for its deep dish pizza, but a place called Homeslice was nearby and had excellent thin crust pizza. After dinner, we went back to the airport, where we were entertained by employees driving polishing machines, and doing all kinds of maintenance and other work. At 3:45 AM, we headed to security clearance, which was already a line a couple hundred feet long. Eventually we made it through that fun process, and boarded a plane to New York less than 24 hours after we had arrived.
As we were walking down the concourse I stopped in to the restroom, and while Phil waited outside stopped in talked about the Notre Dame gear he was planning to buy. He had been on the same flight, so at first Phil thought he was someone we had seen at the DePaul game, but it turned out he just saw us wearing UConn gear, and wanted to let us know he was planning to be at the Notre Dame game. But he wasn’t just a fan he was Howard Turner, father of Brianna Turner. Her mother Kelly showed up and we stopped for a brief discussion about basketball Notre Dame, UConn and the unfairness of injuries. Unfortunately, we had arranged for a pickup so we couldn’t stay long and hope to get to see them on Saturday.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...073741954.100001448080687&type=1&l=8808aaf30b
