Satisfy My Appetite with Something Spectacular

Sunday - July 17, 2016

When the days turned to hours turned to minutes turned to seconds, I did not want to leave - his face and his embrace kept me stagnant and hesitating. As our relationship strengthened over the years, I learned to never take his presence for granted - a lesson I'm thankful to have finally learned. I am not sure if this helped or hindered me when we finally hit that point of departure, but regardless I could not help the burning in my face or the tears welling in my eyes when it came time to go.

I had woken up at 8:00am to get ready and complete my packing. I brought my things downstairs at about 9:00am then had to start playing tetris in the car to make everything fit. We were finally ready to go get breakfast by about 10:30am. We went to Misty Moonlight (of course!) with Zach, Clair, Tony, Ana, Cata, Todd, Jacquie, Lee, Dolky and Austin. Austin and I both ordered corned beef hash because we are actually the same person.

Goodbye hugs were traded with all of my wonderful friends who made the trip out to see me. Jacquie, Tony, Austin and I headed to Lou's to thank him and Cat for letting us have the party at their place and then we were on our way. Without a second glance, we jumped onto the road from Route 20 to 90W and kept on till Buffalo. Here we got a sidetracked trying to find the correct highway, but finally made it onto Route 5 which took us on scenic lake drive around the Great Lakes. We passed through Erie and thought of Holly, of course. If we had more time we would have stopped in to say hello. The scenic lake drive added quite a bit of time to our ETA and we still had to stop for gas and food. We stopped in Dunkirk and went into a very interesting bar. It was a very small shack and as we walked in, most of the tenants turned to stare at us. A man, already inebriated, demanded to see our IDs. The bar tender laughed when he saw this which made me suspect that the guy was just a local having some fun. Needless to say, we kept our time in that bar short, grabbed our hot dogs and ran. We took some fun sunset photos over by the lake then kept on. We made it to Cleveland just after 11:00pm. I chatted for a short time with Michelle Cruz and Jacquie and I game planned the next day. We were going to reset and stay in Cleveland till noon to get lunch with Michelle, then see Shay after but it seemed that Shay was booked full with errands that day so we decided to leave early in the morning to head to Chicago. I had a tough time sleeping because I was so worried about making it out to Chicago on time, then the rain and thunder rolled in and kept us both up a while. Thanks Michelle for letting us crash for the night!

Fun fact: My oldies playlist lasted us from about 1pm till 9pm - solid 8 hours included Earth, Wind and Fire, Eric Clapton, The Foundations, Al Greene, Elton John, Billy Joel, Abba and much much more. Once we finished that playlist, we made the switch to Drake, Nicki Minaj and Fetty Wap.

Monday - July 18, 2016
We woke up at the same time as Michelle and managed to head out at about 7:45am, armed with coffees and bagels from Bruegger's. I was rushing on the entire drive, concerned that we would not make our 12:30pm lunch date with Shay. Our ETA was 1:15pm and I thought the whole link-up was shot but Shay suggested that she leave work an hour early instead so that we could meet at 2:00pm and take our time - perfect! Thanks Shay for your thoughtfulness. What was hilarious is that we actually arrived in Chicago at 12:45pm because we did not account for the time difference. We KNEW it would happen, but we were not sure when we were going to cross that threshold. We snagged a great parking spot - a woman nearly snuck in while I was reversing in but thankfully my aggressive NJ/NY/MA driver persona kicked in and I was able to box her out to keep our spot. The couple who had just parked their car behind us commented at how much of a jerk she was, trying to take our spot when we were clearly there first. They were very kind and gave us some recommendations for walking around the city. We took a walk since we had some time to kill, but we ended up walking away from the water instead of towards it. This ended up working for the better because we learned about a parking app that we could use to refill our meter and avoid tickets. We got that app then walked towards the water. We passed the Chicago Art Institute and looped back towards Jackson Blvd to get to the Plymouth Rooftop Bar. I was impressed that we made it before Shay who was always so historically punctual. Her and her friend Dan arrived shortly after. Shay was looking fly with her nice black dress and auburn blazer - I would not have expect anything less. We took some time catching up and getting to know one another while we waited for Patrick to arrive. Mr. Rabbitt did not arrive until 3:00pm so we ordered an appetizer in between to fill our empty tummies. We ordered just before Pat got there then gave him a lot of grief for arriving late. It was so great to see Shay and Patrick, it has been at least a year and a half since last seeing them. Shay is working for a non-profit and Patrick is soon to be pursuing a teaching degree! Jacquie and I split a pretty fantastic Caprese Avocado wrap - mozzarella, tomato and avocado! It was so incredible that I am still hung up thinking about it's tastiness. Old familiar jokes were traded and the group, new and old, relaxed happily on the rooftop enjoying a summer day in the Windy City. Once we finished up, we walked over to the water and made it to Buckingham (?) Fountain! It was a gorgeous fountain  - Patrick and I made jokes about how the juxtaposition of the water against the city backdrop really added to the beauty. We also passed Columbia Art College and saw lots of great local outdoor pieces. So many beautiful gardens in Chicago! After a number of silly photos and frolicking, Jacquie and I confused the locals with the intersection we thought our car was parked at. Once we confirmed that we were NOT parked outside of Sears Tower (which would have required a train ride to get to in a timely manner), Dan and Patrick gave us recommendations and we exchanged hugs so that Jacquie and I could head back tot he car. We had an 18 minute walk and only 3 minutes left on our meter so we BOOKED IT back to the car. It was great! I've always wanted to breathe in the fumes of a metropolis while weaving in and out of unassuming pedestrians. Somehow we made it back to the car without incurring any tickets. Funnily enough, we were jumping back into our car as our friends behind us were getting into theirs! We waved them off and headed off to Naperville to see Ibby.

The drive took about an hour and we arrived at 6:00pm. Since we had just eaten, we decided to relax and drink some beers instead. Without much coercing, Jacquie and I decided to take it easy and stay in Naperville for the night instead of heading to Madison. Ibby was our last visit before heading out into truly uncharted territories, therefore we figured it would be nice to take advantage of a real bed and shelter for one more night. Although Jacquie has driven cross-country before, she took the mid-route to get to Colorado, therefore Day 3 would be a fresh start into new states for the both of us. and had gone north to Wisconsin, North Dakota or Montana so we decided that we'd have that be our fresh Day 3 start. I showed them the John Muir Trail, we joked about silly thirsty single engineer males in Naperville and tinder profiles. After a couple each, we walked the 20 minutes into town to Lou Malnati's for deep dish pizza. There we split a pitcher of Goose Island and got pretty rowdy as we got deeper into it. We had a very loud conversation about politics, which may or may not have been a wise restaurant conversation but oh well, I'm used to being an obnoxious and rowdy 20 year old. We chomped into our pizzas, which were amazing. Afterwards, we headed around town. I'm appalled by how Ibby took us poor and unassuming ladies through the streets of Naperville under the guise of showing us around, while she was actually just trying to catch and battle pokemon. We ended up at Potter's - it had looked closed from the front but they had a nice porch out back where we happened upon a live band playing. We got a round and enjoyed the music. Soon it came to quitting time (we actually passed our Lou Malnati's waiter on the way out) and then walked the long walk home. Ibby set us up and Jacquie and I fell into a deep, deep sleep. Haha.

Playlist included: Florence and the Machine (all of them), John Mayer (Dreaming with a Broken Heart), TLC (No Scrubs on repeat) and the Chicago Soundtrack.

Tuesday - July 19, 2016
We're headed to Wisconsin! Jacquie and I got an opportunity to shower at Ibby's (which we're both very grateful for, I'm not sure how many more days will pass before we get to shower again). We'll be stopping in Madison for lunch and hitting up all the recommendations from Erin!

We loved Madison. It was a beautiful city! We parked right outside of the Public Library which was really nice, I would've loved to spend more time there if we had the opportunity. We walked by the capitol building to find a spot. Since we had already had pizza the night before, we decided to just peak in at Ian's Pizza on State before heading to Michaelangelo's. It was a really quaint cafe with a foreign owner. I'm not sure where his accent was from, but he had opened the cafe about 20 years ago. The food was delicious - I tried their curried chick pea soup! So tasty, but it filled me up enough that I didn't need my sandwich anymore - oh well, road snack! We added time to our meter then walked down State St. We were really caught off guard by how beautiful the streets were! The roads were lined with many restuarants featuring comfortable outdoor seating, thrift shops and quirky stores. We kept getting held up from the lake terrace, our end destination, by these stores and after making a few purchases had to actively avoid looking at any interesting looking storefronts. The lake was gorgeous. You could just make out homes on the opposite end. Young folks littered the docks with their half covered bodies, soaking in the rays on the beautiful summer day. Sailboats filled the pier and a small section near us was sectioned off for swimming. Jacquie became obsessed with the city and decided that she'd find a job to work there next summer. After stepping into a few outdoor gear shops, we found out that there was a climbing spot out by Devil's Lake. It's a shame, if we had more time we absolutely would've spent an afternoon checking out what Wisconsin had to offer. We grabbed some toiletries from the pharmacy (since I left my toothbrush at Michelle's the day prior), grabbed some iced coffees from Colectivo's and retreated back to our car.

We drove for miles and miles, passing through the rest of Wisconsin and the Twin Cities. The landscape went through minimal changes but I still found it amazing. Jacquie, unable to read or write or occupy herself when she's in the passenger seat due to motion sickness, decided to quiz me on every state's capitals and nicknames. Her US georgraphy questions killed time for about an hour haha, so we had to find some other conversations to have. One of the more interesting ones was where we asked each other, "If any childhood book you read could be real, which one would you live in?". We agreed immediately that Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia were givens. Others included Alice in Wonderland, Roald Dahl stories (not the Witches though), the Magic School Bus and Dr. Seuss. As we approached the Minnesota-North Dakota, we switched to the Sounds of the Trail and listening to Gizmo talk to us about gear, a day in the life of a thru-hiker and more. Definitely one of my favorite podcasts - any of you out there that may want to go backpacking or on a long thru-hike ought to consider listening to it! We found a free campsite in Hendrum, MN and pulled over there for the night. My only regret is that the sky was more or less overcast and as a result we couldn't sleep beneath the full moon. When we pulled into camp, we had two differing concerns on our minds. Jacquie was terrified that we had pulled into the quintessential serial killer haunt - remote, dark and spooky. I was terrified that we would encounter lightning storms since we passed a number of strikes on the drive over, but I reasoned with myself that North Dakota is so flat, just because we can see the lightning doesn't mean that it's anywhere close by. We manuevered into my makeshift bed in the back of the car and fell asleep comfortably.

Playlist included: Cage the Elephant, Mandolin Orange, Adele, Romeo Santos, Xtra, Marc Anthony, Destiny's Child, Outkast, Childish Gambino, and the Sounds of the Trail Podcast, Queen