We said “goodby” to Milwaukee and made the short run down to Racine where we continued to question the weather gurus. We found after being caught in the rain so often in Milwaukee that we were wary of leaving the boat without our rain coats. We would not be caught unaware again. So while we did get out and explore a lot, we also kept a keen eye on lake conditions.
Lisa and I decided to take a long walk to see the Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings for SC Johnson Co. Unfortunately there were no tours that day, so we had to be satisfied with a peek through the fence. We
Our plan was to stay 2 nights in Racine and then head to Kenosha for the holiday weekend. Lake Michigan didn’t like those plans. The weather began to deteriorate and we spent many hours looking at options. We would think there was an open window on the lake only to see it slammed shut. And other choices presented themselves that were enticing, but we weren’t urge anymore if we could trust that the weather would be as predicted and the predictions still weren’t great.
We delayed leaving Racine by one night to let the lake settle. We also abandoned the thought of going to Kenosha and chose to make a run straight to Chicago only to find that we could not get a slip in Chicago. So we had to continue on another 12 miles (1 + hrs) to Hammond.
Finally CHICAGO!
We were very pleasantly surprised by Chicago. Being that I am not a big city kind of girl, I expected Chicago to be bustling, bossy and brash. Instead we found a friendly, welcoming city full of creative green spaces and areas just asking to be explored. We took an Architectural Boat tour along the Chicago River since we knew Subject to Change was too tall to travel under the Chicago bridges. The tour was excellent and gave us lots of history and interesting facts about the buildings in Chicago.
I am waaaaaaaay behind on the blog, so I’ll end this one here. Coming up- Heading south on the rivers.
Here’s a dump of more Chicago pics.
