We woke up to a nice sunny unlike the previous morning. We had breakfast and left our tent up while we went out to complete the “3 Dunes Challenge”, which is a hiking trail that goes to the peak of the 3 largest (?) dunes in the park around 200ft. We checked out the visitor centre where they had some snakes and turtles and a neat wooden model of an ant lion (which the kids kept as a pet back home one time). We started the hike and noticed the entire path was basically beach sand, so we decided to hike it barefoot. We immediately had a big climb. It was really nice hiking barefoot in a forest through the soft sand. We met another couple hiking with us who had two young kids, one of whom was crawling up the hill. It looked like it was going to be a long day for them but they ended up only being slightly behind us.
Once we got to the top of the first dune we had a beautiful view of the top of all the trees below us. It almost seemed like we were in a tropical jungle from how green everything was.
After making it through the top of two more dunes and we looped back to our camp site, had a quick lunch, packed up everything waved good bye to our neighbours and headed on our way to Chicago around 11:30AM. We only had a planned 1 hour drive to our hotel in downtown Chicago. As we got closer to the city the traffic became heavier, and we decided to take the non-toll highway into the city that was supposed to be only 4 min longer according to Google.Traffic was heavy but it kept moving and eventually we made it to our hotel after about 1.5 hours of driving. It was neat to see the downtown skyscrapers get bigger and bigger as we approached the city. We learned later that Chicago was the birthplace of skyscrapers after the great Chicago fire.
Our room wasn’t quite ready to so we decided to head out to explore the city on foot. The family was starting to get very hangry so we grabbed lunch at the grocery store and had it in a picnic area in between tall office towers. We headed towards a large playground near millennium park, and checked out the river front along the way. The skyscrapers all had very unique designs, and the architecture was amazing. There were many scenic tour boats going up and down the river. Our friend Dave recommended we do the architectural scenic boat ride but we decided it would have to be when we came back to Chicago as we only had two nights here and we weren’t sure the kids would appreciate it as much at their age. Chicago was a beautiful city, and we all agreed it was way nicer than Toronto. W
We eventually arrived to the park where the kids needed something to pick them up. We decided to get slushies at the park which turned out to be close to $5 US each for regular small slushies. It seems like everything is more or less the same price as in Canada except with the exchange rate it’s basically 35% more expensive. Katherine and I both got a sample and they were delicious. I met a Japanese family visiting people they knew in Chicago from Fukuoka. The park had multiple sections for different age groups and was all designed around trees/the forest which was neat. However there were many mosquitoes which weren’t expecting in downtown Chicago. We made plans to take the Subway back as everyone was overtired from all the walking they had done (not to mention the 3 dunes hike they had already done earlier in the day). Crews were busy cleaning up fencing and everything else in the massive park as apparently a multi day music festival (Lollapalooza) had just wrapped up. Once we arrived to the subway, there was no way for us to get kid tickets from the machine. The sign directed us to call for an attendant by pushing a button. After pushing the button, no one came for what seemed like 5 minutes while the call ended up flashing the blue lights and making an announcement in the whole station.. Eventually a friendly man came and helped us out. He basically told us there wasn’t really a way to get a kids ticket without a metro card and just told us to get 3 adult tickets.
Once we got back to the hotel we got “Deep Dish Pizza” recommended by others and what Chicago is supposedly well known for. The Chicago pizza restaurant happened to be attached to our hotel lobby and it turned out they made everything from scratch and it was all completely soy-free for Katherine (not an easy feat for eating out for us!). After the very filling pizza we all called it a night.
Trip Around The World 
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