Two Days in Chicago with Kids and Teens or, In the Midwest it's Always Still Snowing in April

0 Shares

travel dates: April 2022

Taking a quick break from last summer’s blog posts for a belated recap of last spring’s spring break trip to Chicago–everyone’s favorite spring break destination.

Well.

Not really.

But we had a few different midwestern colleges we needed go get to so that our then senior, Milo, could pick one of them to go to. Only he ended up going to Nashville instead, so it turns out we could have stayed somewhere warmer. But this was way back when he was still on the waitlist at Vanderbilt and when we had a bunch of colleges we still needed to see because most of his in person auditions had gone virtual because of Omicron. Stupid Omicron.

And that’s how we ended up spending spring break dodging snowstorms in the midwest instead of at a beach somewhere. It snowed when we were in Ohio and then I think again when we were in Wisconsin and also our last night in Chicago. Not a lot of snow. But snow. And cold. We mostly just looked at colleges for most of the trip, but we decided to spend three nights in Chicago after all the college visits were done, since college visits were of limited interest to those of us who weren’t headed for…college. And since we’d never been to Chicago.

We did see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland:

But mostly I’m just going to talk a little about what we did in Chicago. We had a pretty cool and pretty inexpensive AirBnb, but it was a little ways out, and transportation was sometimes challenging. We mostly took public transportation (the house was right on a bus line and about a 10 minute walk from an L station), but we did a Lyft one morning, too. We made heavy use of our reciprocal museum memberships in Chicago, so that I don’t think we paid admission for anything that we did.

And also we just did free stuff some.

Like seeing the Bean/Cloud Gate, even though it was very cold! It turns out it’s pretty much the law that you have to take pictures like this when you visit Chicago. At least it’s the Law of Instagram. And you don’t want Instagram cops coming after you!

The Lincoln Park Zoo was our other free thing. I know from past experience that zoos in the northern half of the country can be a little lackluster so early in spring, with animals huddling inside instead of being out and about. But we still saw some stuff and the walk there through the park was nice as well.

There wasn’t much going on outside at the farm area, but they have a nice play area inside for kids. Younger kids than ours, really, so we didn’t spend much time there, even though it was warm.

Dave wasn’t dissuaded by not being the target age for climbing on this tractor (just kidding; it looks like he’s just talking to Abe):

More zoo picture dump. Here’s the skyline from the zoo:

The gorilla exhibit was interesting and inside.

Some animals don’t mind the cold!

Inside giraffes:

Dave and a wall of fish:

Done with the zoo and walking to the train, I think:

Park squirrel:

We went to the Chicago History Museum:

There was a lot of Chicago history there, including a good bit for kids. Lots of hands on stuff at the exhibit about the Great Chicago Fire:

And a kids’ play area, where you can make yourself into a Chicago Style hot dog:

Probably the Field Museum was everyone’s favorite, though. It was a little tough to get to on public transportation, so we ended up doing a long, cold walk, but…more nice views! (I realize I’m pretty much just photo dumping here. Someday we’ll spend longer in Chicago and bring the RV and I’ll feel equipped for a more thorough Guide to Chicago type post).

This isn’t the Field Museum. It’s the library, but it had a cool lion outside:

The museum is right by Lake Michigan! We didn’t spend a lot of time doing Lake Michigan stuff (cold!) so it was nice to get a good view of it here (oh, and I just noticed Gus’s head peeking over the sign):

The Field Museum is an enormous natural history museum, and I think it would have been impossible to see it all in one day. Or at least inadvisable. But we enjoyed spending a few hours seeing a lot of it anyway. Abe started out grumpy, but was won over by the very extensive exhibit on evolution: