Chicago, June 22 & 23

Blog to Alaska: Day 5 & 6, Mile 1132

June 22 & 23, 2012

We pulled out of the Lake Springfield area Southeast of Springfield, Ill Friday morning and drove North through Bloomington and Rockford and then Southeast to Union, Ill.  Arriving around 2:30PM, we set the trailer up quickly and then drove the truck 35 minutes to the train station in Crystal Lake.  Arrived Des Plaines, Ill around 5PM to be greeted by our friends Karen and Jim Quinn who had driven from Berwyn to join us for dinner.  We had met them 2 years earlier on our China Spree trip to China.  It was just as if we had just seen them in Shanghai last week.  We chatted for about an hour over pub beers and then headed to a great Italian restaurant that Karen had found on the internet called ROMA using Trip Advisor app. (Karen is an expert analyst for Trip Adviser and is well published on this App [>40 critiques!]).  We had a wonderful time catching up with Karen and Jim over delicious food.  The mussels in red sauce and the seafood/lobster risotto were fantastic!!  They are expecting another Grandchild soon here in Illinois and recently were in California visiting their Daughter and Family on their way back from their winter home in ST Miguel, Mexico. We all agreed that it has been great how all of us on the China trip have continued to communicate and meet since our return in Oct 2010.  We were very lucky to have met and traveled with such wonderful people.

Karen & Jim Quinn

Saturday, we took the train into the Chicago and met Judy’s Niece Dominique and her wife Monica.  They are both choral music teachers in the Chicago/Evanston area. After a brief walk through Millennium Park (Ye Ole Grant Park) to see the famous Cloud Gate (or shiny bean) and the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker bandshell, we met them at the Chicago Art Institute. We had not been to the museum since they opened the new contemporary wing that has dramatically transformed the museum. 

Judy, Dominique, Monica & Roxie

Cloud Gate & Chicago Skyline

Frank Gehry's Pritzker Bandshell 

The museum was showing a retrospective on Roy Lichtenstein from about 1950 until his death in 1997.  The exhibit entailed over 10 rooms of his art and showed the progression of his painting from “Washington Crossing the Delaware” to early experiments with cartoonish elements of print characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to his fame as a Pop artist in the 1960’s with his own characters.  Later, he produced paintings that were spoofs on Picasso, the Laocoön sculpture, van Gogh and others, and then into a final abstraction period that still incorporated his original style of dots and geometric lines.  

CAI new contemporary wing

We also saw an installation a beautiful of Chagall stain glass windows as well as hitting the Georgia O’Keefe’s, Mary Cassatt’s, Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on the Grand Jatte,  Hopper’s wonderful night painting “Nighthawks”, the “American Gothic” painting, a large collection of Picasso’s, George Braque’s, van Gogh’s self portrait, works by Man Ray, Modigliani and many, many more.  Afterwards, we visited their new apartment near Evanston and met their puppy Roxie followed by lovely dinner in a nearby Italian restaurant (with great gin martinis).  After a wonderful afternoon and visit, Dominique and Monica drove us to the train station and we headed back to our little silver abode.

Tomorrow, we head North and West into Minnesota.

See you down the road

David & Judy