01 August 2015

Tails from the road

Points to Shadowrun.  I figured she might know where I was a few weeks back.  After all, I was kinda in the neighborhood (if not across the state).  I had a business conference in Chicago for a few days at the end of June.  I'll admit I've been to Chicago many times but usually it is either passing through or visiting plants on the west side of Chicago.  I have never been downtown so I took the opportunity to check out the local flora and fauna.  I got in a couple of nice long runs along Lake Shore Drive, found an amazing pizza place (Blaze Pizza) that makes your pie in 3 minutes, hiked across downtown to visit some of the tourist sites, took the "L" train back to the airport.  Pretty good conference, a nice break from the daily headaches at the office.  One more city off my bucket list.       

Chicago Skyline
Navy Pier

Cloud Gate


Water wall
Two guesses where what TV show this fountain is featured in
Some really good pizza



Last weekend I took an extended trip up to New Braunfels (south of Austin) with my brother and his family to spend some time tubing on the Guadalupe River.  It's sort of a summer tradition down here in Texas.  Take a scorching day and go spend it floating down the river on inner tubes with a few hundred other people trying not to get fried.  Momma and SIL were not able to go so I took the furry kids instead.  First time they've been to the river.  For two old hot dogs (who don't swim), it was an interesting weekend.  Hot, wet, & overfed but I think they made out just fine.  







We even squeezed in a side trip to a local dog park that just opened up.  



  

4 comments:

ShadowRun300 said...

I've been to Chicago a couple of times. I s'pose 4 1/2 hours away can be considered "my neighborhood". Illinois is a long a$$ state. I missed out on the pizza joint though. The one we went to took over an hour to get our pizza!
Glad you got to get out in the city a bit while on your biz trip. And your float trip looks fun! We used to do that kind of stuff all the time. I imagine the dogs loved it.
Good to see you back again! You had a lot of catching up to do, but you done good!

Abby said...

Ooh, I've been to Chicago a couple of times - both for work conferences too, so you know they were a loooooong time ago. I remember it as a (surprisingly) friendly city. The downtown area was a fun place to just walk around and had all kinds of restaurants. I don't recall any 3-minute pizzas, though!

Tubing down a river is a great way to beat the heat. Nice of you to bring the pooches as I imagine all that fur is not so nice in Texas right now!

terri said...

Looks like you experienced a good bit of Chicago!

I was going to guess 'Friends' as the tv show that featured the water fountain, but knew that couldn't be right since 'Friends' is set in NYC. I had to Google it to find the answer, so it wouldn't be fair to chime in with the answer. Maybe someone else knows it off the top of their head!

The tubing adventure sounds like a blast and it looks like the dogs enjoyed the water in spite of the fact they don't swim. (I thought it was strange that Lucy doesn't swim, but maybe that's more common with dogs than I thought.)

Riot Kitty said...

I went to Chicago for work two years ago, and we were so booked that I had no time to actually go visit Chicago. Go figure.

We've had record-breaking heat here this summer, but then I remember how hot it gets in TX.