Our drive to the Chicago suburbs wasn’t too bad except for the road construction on I-55 – down to one lane! Once on I-355 we were good. Illinois, land of corn fields and soybean fields. An occasional site from Route 66 – like Dixie’s truck stop. The closer you get to Chicago the amount of distribution warehouses and buildings is incredible.

A quick stop to visit my sister and her husband in their new townhouse and then settle into our hotel room. The Westin is located convenient to my family and has a really nice walking path winding through office buildings. We forgot how green the grass can be here.

I made a quick stop to see Alyssa, my new grand niece, born while we were on our cruise. She is a doll–although she won’t smile for me LOL

Of course, we had to drive over to Woodfield Mall to see where the crazy person drove into the Sears entrance with his SUV last Friday. Then there is Macy’s with Christmas Trees already set-up.

At night, we venture to a White Sox game at the old Comiskey Park now called the Guaranteed Rate Stadium?!!? Everyone still calls is Comiskey. In the first inning the Cleveland hits a Grand Slam and it went downhill from there – final score Cleveland 11 and White Sox 0. The evening was beautiful and our seats were perfect. Since we haven’t been to an outdoor baseball game in a couple of years we forgot how nice a night game can be. This park also has closed off the upper deck seating and moved people down into the stands. And just like the Rays Mascot, Raymond, the White Sox Mascot is kind of weird looking. His name is Southpaw and most people don’t know what he is suppose to be – maybe a dirty sock?

On Wednesday, we will drive to the last of the new National Parks – the Indiana Dunes. The last time I was there was when I was in High School and it was a state park!