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The Great Midwestern Trek of 2016!  Part Uno.

Soooo... every summer there's a big geekfest for Statisticians in a different city.  When we heard this year's conference was going to be in Chicago, we thought, "Perfect!  We can use that as the springboard for another Great Western Trek!"  But a bit of the wind was taken out of our sails when we realized that Mr. Pickles would have to come back home right after the conference, due to the need to prepare for another important meeting soon after.  So no Great Western Trek. :(  However, we could still enjoy a Great MIDwestern Trek, getting to relish our time with our Chicago peeps without having to hurry through on our way to points west or east.

And then we learned that due to a tight work schedule beforehand, Mr. Pickles was going to have to fly into Chicago.

...by himself.

And stay in a hotel near the conference.

...by himself.

Which meant that in order to make a Great Midwestern Trek at all, Mrs. Pickles was going to have to pack, close up the house, drive 700 miles, and otherwise take care of 6 minors for 5 days all on her own.



So we did that.  I figured that if I were going to have to be all by my onesie for a week, I might as well be doing fun, adventurous things with the kids.  And the kids cooperated amazingly -- they were one and all absolute angels the entire time I was in charge.  (They waited until Daddy rejoined us to fall apart.)

This trip was rather complicated for various reasons -- by the time we were able to get down to business and plan the silly thing, Mr. Pickles was so steeped in writing his presentation for the conference that I had to make all the plans myself -- in the past Mr. Pickles has done the lion's share of the planning.  Furthermore, most of the friends-and-relations we were hoping to visit were either returning from vacation, on vacation, or leaving for vacation, which made it interesting even just trying to get a hold of people.  The end result was that I was still planning the last half of our trip while we were already in Chicago.

Ahhh, there's nothing like making it up as you go along!  That's how we roll.

So, let us embark!  Mr. Pickles flew off on a Sunday at the end of July, and the rest of us headed out the following day.  We waited until rush hour was at an ebb, and departed at a much more humane hour than our normal time.  (I just didn't have the emotional strength to get everyone out the door by o-dark-thirty on my own, not being a morning person.)

Once again, despite all attempts to the contrary, I proved myself a terrible photojournalist.  I have absolutely no pictures of our first victims visit!  We stopped to see friends in Pittsburgh -- it was the girls' former piano teacher and her lovely family.  We hung out for a couple hours, played with their toys (the 4 year old wasn't quite sure how he felt about that), played her piano, and ate dinner with them, and took no pictures!  Sigh.  It was a good, although short, visit.

I wanted to make it as close to halfway as possible that first day, so we pushed on to Ohio.  We weren't able to trespass on the hospitality of any friends-or-relations that night since everyone was GONE, so to keep it cheap I booked a KOA cabin outside Cleveland.

Best. Decision. Ever.  The kids loved it!  We haven't taken them camping yet, and although this barely qualifies as rustic,

seriously?  AC and a flat screen TV??

...it was enough of an adventure for them.

For one thing, there was no indoor plumbing!  You had to walk a short way to the bathhouse.  I was mentally panicking about that, but it ended up not being a big deal at all. 

The kids slept great -- I slept hardly at all!  My brain does not like being the only one in charge, and besides giving me a raging tension headache it kept thinking up worst-case scenarios -- you know how rational you are in the wee sma' hours. And every time someone rolled over I jolted awake, wondering if they were getting up to use the bathroom and needed me to walk them there.  (The irony was that no one did, except me!)

Well, be the night ever so long, morning comes at last.  The campground was right on a small lake, which was all mysterious and misty at dawn.

Miraculously, we all woke up, got dressed, ate breakfast, unmade the beds, re-packed the van, and took off before 9:30!

AND had time to snap a silly picture!

After a brief stop for gas and COFFEEEEE, we were ready for day 2!  This one was more boring -- just lots and lots of driving and potty stops and -- of course -- 

...fields and fields of CORN.

There was also a bit of unpleasantness around South Bend -- some bridgework on an overpass had the turnpike down to one lane for a bit.  However, we didn't have it nearly as bad as the eastbound side.

you can't possibly tell from this shot, but the traffic on the other side was at a dead stop for MILES and MILES.  You can be sure we avoided that on the way back!

Well, we finally made it to Chicago!  Yay!  Uncle Dave and Aunt Katie and their cat had the great joy and honor (*coughcough*) of hosting us for several days.

Since Dave and Katie both had to work, and Mr. Pickles was at his mathy conference, and also to give the cat a break from us, the kids & I went out and about doing fun things.  We went back to the waterfall park (as it shall heretofore ever be known) and had a picnic lunch.

As usual, the girls spent a good bit of time trying to give me a heart attack -- this time joined by Jojo.

Dominic was safely contained.

The little boys had fun exploring more at their level,

 throwing rocks in the water,

...aaaand themselves.

this was right after he fell in the first time and wasn't too happy about the situation

after the third time he didn't mind so much

 

watching the water striders

not sure what exactly possessed me to have them put on clean clothes this morning -- so pointless

It's hard to get a baby-level shot of Dominic.

 I see you back there, Mommy!

ooh!  what's this?

hahaaa!  I'm nuts!

yay!  dirt!

mmm, delicious...

...or not...

hey mom, can we go Right Up to the water?

really, they were wet enough already... so why not?

she found the Batcave!

Our fun time was unceremoniously ended when one of the boys (name withheld to protect the guilty) declared he had to go potty -- and not the kind where you can just point him at a bush, which we'd already done several times -- so we trekked back up the trail to the fly-infested pit toilets, at which point he decided he really didn't want to go anymore.  (Not that I blame him.)

the requisite silly picture

We headed back to hq anyway for naps.

I always had to enter the house first, to warn the cat that Those Small Noisy People were returning and give her a chance to go hide downstairs.  Plus the little boys were terrified of her after she hissed at one of them, except for the baby who was fascinated and wanted to chase her constantly, so it was in everybody's best interests that she remain safe downstairs with the door closed (Dominic couldn't be trusted near open steps) until Uncle Dave or Aunt Katie came home.

The next day we were going to choose one of the many children's museums in the area to go to, but the kids begged me just to stay home and take it easy, so we did!  Ahhh, how I love having homebody children. :)  So we just went to a local park instead.

this is Dominic's new pose

This park shall heretofore be known as The Train Park -- not just for the play trains, but also for the REAL trains that would barrel by every few minutes, causing much excitement among the male set.

big brothers are so helpful!

Mr. Pickles was finally done with his conference on Thursday, so on Friday we all went to the Brookfield Zoo -- Dave and Katie are members and were able to get some awesome discounts for our brood.  The zoo was awesome -- you could easily spend a whole day there and still not see everything.  We had only planned to spend a couple hours, but ended up there for a good part of the day!

Daniel with his godparents!

We started off in the kid section, which was really cool.  You could get REALLY close to the animals.

a Joey with the joeys!

here's a better shot of the joey

this joey wasn't crazy about his pouch (it was nap time)

hello, emus

red panda!  there is some debate in this house whether this was Master Shifu or not.

What's a proper kids' zoo without a petting zoo, so kids can experience smelly goats trying to eat their clothing?

Katie made friends with several and named them.

They had goat brushes in a bucket so the kids could feel like they were doing something for the goats, who were usually totally oblivious since there was food around.

There was also a parakeet house, with a zillion parakeets flying around and dive-bombing you.

 They were beautiful.

...aaaand very loud.

We also went to see the dolphin show.  We enjoyed it a lot, despite how unbearably hot it was inside.

Dolphin!

 Swimming with the dolphins!

One of the dolphins was a baby, and just learning her tricks.  She was adorable.

after the show we went to the underwater viewing area.  dolphins are just so cool.

 Among the other animals we saw were various bears.

The Bear with a bear!

Of course, Uncle Dave saw grizzlies up close and personal when he was driving through Alaska -- and without a nice plexi-glass separator.

There were also peacocks just, you know, wandering around.

peabiddies!

best drinking fountain ever

It was pretty hot that day -- most of the big cats were doing this:

The inside exhibits were welcome breaks from the heat.

hey, someone tell Marlin...

...we found Dory!

We finished off the day with ice cream and a carousel ride.

Well, most of us did.

This little bit of nature-in-action amused me:

...since the young bird was perfectly capable of eating that bagel himself.

Enabler!

 Everyone was footsore on the way out, except Dominic who traveled First Class all day.

Our time with Dave & Katie came to an end.  They were great, patient hosts.  The whole time there we ate amazingly well -- I think Aunt Katie grilled for us pretty much every night.  It was great just getting to spend time leisurely with them, since usually we have to breeze through on our way to somewhere else.

However, I'm sure the cat slept for days after we left.

Time to head back East!

to be continued...