Blog

Below you can read my very long, detailed, probably boring recap of a truly great vacation. Katie and I flew with Noah to Indiana and then rented a car for 10 days of driving between Indiana and Illinois. Also, enjoy the many pictures I’ve posted at the Weibust Photo gallery.

Katie, Noah, and I at my cousin Caryn’s wedding reception

The Story

Vacation was great. We started out by flying in to Indy for my cousin’s wedding. It was my first trip to Indy and the city is great. Everything is clean, traffic is light, and I love all the sports complexes right in the city. The wedding was at a church just outside the downtown area and the reception was at an awesome German restaurant, The Rathskeller. Everybody had a real good time at the reception. The food was great and the beer was free.

Sunday morning we got up and drove to Chicago to catch a Cubs game. It was a day game against the Mets. The weather could have been better, it was in the 50’s and rainy at times, but it didn’t bother me. The Cubs won!

Sunday night through Thursday night we stayed at my grandma’s house in McHenry, a suburb of Chicago. From there we ventured to an antique car museum and then went downtown for a day.

The trip to downtown Chicago was good. We started out at the Chicago Board of Trade; it was my first time there. Very cool place. You see a little movie about how the trading process works then you get to observe the trading. We also got to ride what they called the longest escalator in the country/world. It was long; the only longer escalator that I’ve been on that rivaled it was the escalators at Candlestick Park.

After the CBOT we went for lunch at a place my dad and grandpa used to take me to, The Berghoff Restaurant. It’s an old, old, old German place. Great food and good beer. We ate downstairs in the cafe, but I stepped in the main dinning room to get some pics.

Next we hiked over to the Art Institute. Not wanting to sound overly cultured, but I enjoy looking at the paintings, preferably Impressionist art. I saw some good Monet’s, van Gogh’s, a few Picasso’s, and of course the famous “Dot painting” that was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”. We made it to the lower level so Noah could play in the kid’s area; he got really fed up with the stroller. The best thing about the lower level is the little/ miniature rooms. Think doll house, but amazingly detailed.

We left the Art Institute and got back in the car and drove over to and around the Field Museum, Aquarium, Soldier Field, and Grant Park. The fountain isn’t that cool when there isn’t water running, but it still is a sight. I got some great skyline shots of the city and Navy Pier.

After the driving tour we went and parked by the water tower to walk Michigan Ave. It was hard to walk past the Apple store and not run in and buy one of the new PowerBooks (I’ll have one someday). The only store I always hit is Niketown and I went shopping in there. They had an awesome display on the floor. It was like a huge computer monitor. It flipped through a few ads and then stopped with a picture of a number of soccer balls. This display was like 4 ft x 8 ft. Big. But the cool part was you could kick the balls around the display. Kind of like a virtual soccer video game. Very neat. Noah went nuts playing on it. I wish I had a picture!

When everyone was done shopping we walked over to my favorite pizza place in the world, Geno’s East. The meal was great. We had a couple of supremes, with lasagna as an app. And I washed it down with some cold beer.

That was the day in Chicago. A heck of a day. We left McHenry around 8:30am and didn’t get back until around 10:30pm.

The rest of our stay in McHenry was “low key” we went to a park and just hung out at my Gram’s house with my family.

Friday morning we left for Midway airport to pick up Katie’s mom and then were heading to Ft Wayne to visit with Katie’s family. On the way to Ft Wayne we stopped at Notre Dame.

Wow! Notre Dame has an awesome campus. I think it’s the only school that I’ll let Noah go to on my dollar besides Texas A&M. I saw the sights, hit the bookstore and got some pics.

Ft. Wayne was fun. I met Katie’s grandma for the first time. We went to some great restaurants: Halls, Coney Island, and Powers. I was most excited about going to Powers. Katie’s dad has been trying to recreate their burgers for me since I started seeing Katie. I can say that he is very close. Sunday we flew back to Dallas.

It was a marathon vacation. We were in two states, a number of cites. We flew in one airport and out from another. I put 1000 miles on our rental car, a “Clark Griswold esque” mini van. We had some awesome food. I drank a fair amount of beers, at least 5, 6, maybe 10 different flavors. It was fun. And I’ll do it again next summer as my other cousin up there is getting married……..