We had one week in between family visits just hanging out at the marina in Hammond, IN. We mostly relaxed, watched sports, cleaned the boat, did laundry, gambled, and took a nice break from boating. We did make a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field. We biked about 2 miles to a bus stop. We hopped on a bus heading North with our bikes on the front of the bus. We then bought an all-day pass for $5 for the train system called the “L”, for elevated train. We took the red line with lots of Cubs fans to the stadium. The home team lost 3 to 2 in 10 innings, but we had a blast cheering with over 40,000 other people. We reversed our path back to the marina and road our bikes to the boat as the sun was setting. I felt like Cinderella leaving the ball trying to make it back to the boat before it got dark. We had an interesting day on public transit, and all went well!
Deven’s sister Amber, her husband Jimmy and our 2 nephews Jacob and Jared arrived on Thursday afternoon. After the obligatory Walmart run for provisions, we grilled chicken fajitas and drank our signature drink Peace of Chill (Grey Goose Vodka, Sprite, and Blue Curacao). We took the family from Hammond to Chicago on Friday morning with perfect weather for boating. We tied up at the Burnham Harbor marina in the same slip we had when Deven’s parents were on board. We took turns biking along the waterfront that afternoon. We decided to catch an Uber to Navy Pier for dinner and that is when the evening got interesting. We quickly learned that a Karol G concert at Soldier Field and the Mexican Independence Day celebration were going to make travel by car a challenge. We read that 400,000 people were planning on attending the festivities and many of them were in a massive traffic jam on the freeway with Mexican flags waving behind them. After 3 or 4 attempts at getting an Uber, we started walking north towards Navy Pier and eventually hailed a cab. We walked the entire pier and had a yummy dinner at Harry Carey’s. We then got in a cab for the adventure of getting back to the boat. The driver got us as close as possible to the marina amidst the chaos and we walked the ¾ mile past Soldier Field where the concert was.
The next morning, we went to the Shedd Aquarium and enjoyed dolphins, penguins, sharks, whales, and lots more. We went downtown for some deep-dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno’s and a little shopping. The downtown is beautiful and clean with giant stores. Deven and I headed back to the boat to go biking again as we hoped to find me a new/used bike. We had success and I bought a very comfortable bike named Corky. He was a rental last year with Bobby’s Bike Hike. I was able to gift my old bike to a nice young woman on a budget, who had just moved to Chicago to start grad school. We were both very pleased! The 6 of us went to dinner at Boat Drinks, a nice little outdoor place near the marina. They have fire pits and live music and all of us were not interested in trying to Uber or Lyft anywhere else.
The weather was perfect for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Peace of Chillwas able to accommodate all our guests well when it was sunny. Sunday morning, we all woke up to torrential rain and gusty winds. Our guests had breakfast and showered and left around noon for their one night at a downtown Chicago hotel. We had planned to boat back to Hammond on Sunday morning but with 4-to-8-foot waves forecast as well as thunderstorms, we stayed one more night. We made it back safely to Hammond on Monday morning without incident and filled up with diesel that is only $3.99 a gallon! We tied up in our skinny slip assignment one more time. That will likely be the last boating we do for several weeks as our turn at the locks isn’t planned until October 10th.
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