the REAL Chicago day

Well, we knew the day had to come eventually--it was time to go home! But not before we took another side trip, of course. We flew out of Kalispell VERY early in the morning and arrived in Chicago around 11am. The original plan was to visit Chinatown and then the Museum of Science and Industry. But, since so much of what we had planned for our *first* Chicago day had fallen through due to weather, we decided we'd try to go back and do those activities again (AND, we had already paid for them, of course!)

So, despite the fact that it was a very bad day crowd-wise to be going to the big tourist spots in Chicago, we stashed our luggage and made our way to Navy Pier. We went on a river boat architecture tour, which was very fun (although the sun was beating down on us pretty hard).

We rode the ferris wheel--although it wasn't dark, the view was still grand. And of course it has special meaning to us, since it was here that Kevin proposed to me! (One of the two places anyway--Kevin proposed twice so that I could pick which story to tell people when they asked). We were going to use some of our other Navy Pier tickets (saved from our first Chicago day), but the lines were soooo long. We did wander around the stained glass museum in the basement of Navy Pier some. I believe we also had ice cream. Yes, Haagen Das was definitely involved, I think.

Pretty soon, it was time to head back to the train station, where we boarded a COMPLETELY full train headed back to Champaign. Thank goodness for our sleeper car! We didn't get to sleep any, actually, because they were delayed in serving dinner and by the time we got done with that we were practically there. We were glad not to be crammed in like sardines like most of the train, though.

And so, we returned to Champaign. I immediately started trying to think of ways that we could return to Glacier! We do have a pass that's good for all year.... Okay, it's not actually happening of course, but really I feel like we just scraped the surface on all the amazing hikes to do there. It is definitely my favorite National Park now! Chicago was fun too, but I would trade the crowds for a mountain view any day.