The Craziest Vacation Ever

Having fun shouldn’t be this hard.  We had a family reunion to go to in Lowell, Indiana.  Since it’s so close to Chicago, we thought, heck, let’s swing through.

Two days before we get ready to hit the road, the Jeep starts losing oil pressure.  I haven’t fully diagnosed it yet.  But best case scenario, the oil pressure is fine, just the gauge is screwed up.  Worst case… we need a new motor.  Ugh.  So figured it wasn’t a good idea to set out on a 30 hour round trip drive in the thing, so we took Andrea’s mom’s car instead.  Sufficed to say, things were a little cozier in a Carolla than they would have been in the Jeep.

Between late starts, detours for Andrea’s sister to get a rental car, stops to eat, etc, etc… after leaving home Thursday night, we finally arrived in Chicago almost 24 hours later at around 10PM.  Didn’t have time to go up any of the skyscrapers or anything like that.  But we did go to Navy Pier that night for about an hour and a half.  And DID have some fun!

If you look closely you can see the moon next to one of the buildings in the distance. Pretty cool sight in person.

View from the top of the Ferris Wheel on Navy Pier.

I knew Chicago was big, but I didn’t know HOW big. Would be fun to visit, but I would hate living there.

So at about midnight, we left town and headed on to Lowell.  Tolls everywhere.  Geesh, I couldn’t afford to drive there on a daily basis.  Seemed like we were plonking down $4.00 every couple of miles.

The family reunion part was good.  Had a lot of fun, played a lot of games.  Some Cards Against Humanity, and some lawn games when the weather was nicer.

Grandma and Luke are playing with bubbles. Luke was EXCITED!

Andrea sharked everybody tossing beanbags, just like she does with washers.

So we all got up and around Sunday morning.  Then we just kinda hung around for a while, waiting for Andrea’s Aunt to come home, only to find out she wasn’t going to make it home in the first place!  So we left about 3 hours later than planned.  Again, between stopping to eat, pit stop in KC to return the rental car, yadda, yadda, we finally made it home about 4:30AM Monday morning.  And then I’m off to work at 9AM.  Took it upon myself to get an extra hour of sleep.

So I never really want to do a vacation like that again.  Not saying it wasn’t worth it, but it was just way too exhausting.  It took me until about Wednesday to finally get back on track.

So now back to the daily grind.  Off to work today, and hopefully can finish getting my yard mowed tonight… between this trip and work there’s been no daylight to get it done.  C’est’ la vous.