Midwest Road Trip
Part 2
On Friday, I got up at 7 AM. The first thing that I did was go to the kitchenette in our suite and get my poutine from the night before to have for breakfast.
Nothing says “good morning” quite like reheated poutine. Elyse complained that I had nuked my poutine, because, apparently, you just don’t reheat french fries. I simply responded, “Good thing you’re not the one eating it.” I enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t the healthiest breakfast.
Finishing up there, I got myself showered, dressed, and ready to go, and packed myself up. Elyse and Kyle had headed out on their own, with an eye towards riding transit in Windsor, and ultimately taking a bus through the Detroit-Windsor tunnel to get back to the States – the only regularly scheduled transit service in North America that crosses an international border. We would meet up with Kyle again later on in the day, and I would catch up with Elyse again before leaving Canada. With them gone, I got the luggage cart loaded up and ready to go, and then I ran it all out to the parking garage to load into the HR-V.
The living room in our suite.
The kitchenette in our suite. I was not expecting a kitchenette, but I appreciated having it. It had all of the comforts of home, including a breakfast bar, a small refrigerator, a microwave, a dishwasher, and also real dishes and silverware. I made sure to put any dishes that we used during our stay in the dishwasher, and started the dishwasher before I left.
The trash can in the kitchenette. I always pride myself on being a neat guest, and so I made sure that all of the trash was placed in the cans before I left.
Bedroom in our suite.
Our suite had a walk-in shower. I found it a bit weird that the controls for the water were on the opposite side than the showerhead. I had never seen something like this before, and I definitely would not want it this way at home.
The smoke alarm in our suite was a Kidde P4010ACLEDS-2, which has an LED strobe on it. Note that this is the Canadian model, with both English and French wording on it.
System Sensor SPWL fire alarm speaker, for the building alarm system.
The view of Windsor from our suite.
Woomy takes a look out the window and around the suite. Upon surveying his surroundings, he remarked, “I don’t like that!”
RSG fire alarm pull station at the DoubleTree. In typical Canadian form, it is bilingual, and it has a key switch behind the handle for two-stage systems, which is used to bypass the pre-alarm stage and go directly to a general alarm.
Selfie in the elevator on the way down to get the luggage cart.
The luggage carts were prominently branded by Uline. I had never thought about where luggage carts came from, but Uline makes sense. This is their silver “Bellman” luggage cart.
After checking out of the hotel, I was unsupervised for a bit in Windsor. I didn’t know quite what I was going to do, but I was sure that I would figure it out. The first thing that I did was completely unplanned, as I noticed a road sign in front of a furniture store that said, “Autistic Child Area” on it. So I stopped to photograph it.
The “Autistic Child Area” sign, on Edinborough Street in front of Bertoni Chairs and Things.
This was a first for me, seeing a sign about autism as a warning sign on a road. First off, I found it somewhat curious that it was there of all places, because this was a commercial area and not a residential area. It seemed out of place. The sign also made me a bit uncomfortable, though I could not quite pinpoint why at the time.
Thinking about it later, the way it breaks for me is that signs like “deaf child” or “blind pedestrian” make sense because those are asking you to be mindful because there is someone there who lacks one of their senses, and therefore lacks some of the physical means of detecting your vehicle. Very straightforward, and can be interpreted and reacted to in a moment. But how am I supposed to react for an autistic child? I have no clue, and I am an autistic person myself. If I’m a bit confused about what I’m supposed to do with it, I’m sure that others are, too. And if a road sign is not able to convey its message and then be interpreted and reacted to in an instant, then it has failed its purpose. I also felt like it was a bit infantilizing towards autistic people to put a sign up announcing their presence to drivers passing by, and expecting them to accommodate that in their driving, even though we have no idea what that accommodation might be. As an autistic person myself, I don’t want any special accommodations. Leave me be. I just want to get along in this world and go about my business, and that includes not announcing my presence as an autistic person to passing motorists like there is something wrong with me. Yeah, my mind may operate a little bit differently than that of others, but that’s just part of what makes me magnificent, and I just want others to accept me as who I am.
I will admit, though, that I did not “grow up autistic”, as I was only formally diagnosed in my early forties. Obviously, I was still autistic before age 41, but I just didn’t know it until a bit later in life than many. So my perspective on things may be a bit different than someone like Elyse, who did grow up knowing that she was autistic, having been formally diagnosed in childhood. It’s kind of hard to describe, but as someone diagnosed later in life, I feel that compared to someone who was diagnosed as a child like Elyse was, I have far less experience with “being autistic”, even though clearly, I was autistic before my diagnosis, and have been autistic for all 42 years of my existence in this world. But I’ve only known it definitively for a year, so I didn’t get to experience others’ knowing it and reacting based on it. Similarly, I never had any kind of autism-focused interventions when I was growing up, because no one knew back then that I was autistic. My case flew completely under the radar, and I do question whether I would have benefitted from any autism-focused interventions if they had been offered, considering the ham-handed way that the school physical therapist in Rogers handled my toe-walking when I was in kindergarten, and the way that both my fifth grade teacher and my middle school guidance counselor attempted to gaslight me into thinking that I was the cause of all of my problems. But as far as being autistic and knowing it, I have very little experience with that, and I believe that this tends to lead me to look askance at signs like this, in part because I didn’t grow up with them and don’t see them as necessary.
So, all that said, I generally didn’t approve of the sign. If some kind of sign is considered absolutely necessary at that location, perhaps a simple “pedestrians ahead” or “watch for children” sign would be better.
By the time that I finished with the sign, Elyse had messaged me and let me know that she was at the McDonald’s across from Devonshire Mall. When I went in there, Elyse immediately drew my attention to the Big Mac on the menu. There tend to be differences in the menu between the US McDonald’s and the Canadian one, but this one was unusual, with a separate item for a Big Mac with no meat. On the US menu, a no-meat option is available, but it is treated as a customization of the regular Big Mac, rather than a separate item.
The no-meat Big Mac is apparently exactly what it sounds like: a Big Mac with no meat, i.e. just the top, middle, and bottom buns, cheese, the special sauce, lettuce, pickles, and onions. Okay, then.
Finishing up at McDonald’s, Elyse and I headed over to Devonshire Mall, because she wanted to see the Hudson’s Bay store. I was somewhat resistant to that, because with this visit to Canada’s having nothing to do with Today’s Special, I was planning to intentionally skip a visit to any Hudson’s Bay store in furtherance of that idea. But Elyse has this way about things, so that was the end of that.
The lighting in the parking lot was a design that I had never seen before, with six cobrahead lights radiating out of a single pole.
The Hudson’s Bay store at Devonshire Mall in Windsor.
Unlike Toronto, this was just a regular Hudson’s Bay store, and the smallest location that I had ever been to in the chain. I had previously been to three other Hudson’s Bay stores: the flagship location in Toronto (i.e. the store from Today’s Special), the location in Pickering, as well as the location in Gatineau, Quebec. This location was fairly small when compared to those. It had everything that you would expect in a Hudson’s Bay store, but it was a lot smaller and older than I was accustomed to. Here, Elyse talked me into opening up my wallet a bit, as we followed up on our attempt to get one of those nice, wool Hudson’s Bay blankets, which we failed to do during the Toronto trip back in July. The store was out of stock in Toronto, but we remembered what the gentleman said about the twin size: four stripes is twin. This time, Elyse got that twin-sized blanket that she wanted, to go along with the baby blanket from before. I also got a similar throw blanket for the couch upstairs. That was not cheap, but we’d both had our eye on these blankets, so I considered it worthwhile. I am also now a Hudson’s Bay Rewards member, which I suppose will be useful the next time I’m in Canada. Our big purchase also gave us a whole bunch of rewards dollars to spend. Considering when they expired, and considering that it would probably be at least a year before we were in Canada again, we had a choice: use them now, or lose them. So we went shopping. We got a stuffed Zeddy bear (the Zellers mascot), a sweater for Elyse, and a few other small odds and ends, and the total came to within five cents of the rewards that we had earned. Score!
Zeddy, the mascot of Zellers, in plush form. He was leaving Canada to come live with us in the States.
Kyle also joined us at the mall while we were at Hudson’s Bay, and we took him to the bus stop there so that he could continue his own adventure. It was our intention to head over to Bulk Barn at that point, but Kyle told us that there was a Dollarama location inside the mall. Elyse loves going to Dollarama, so we went into the mall and checked that out. We ended up buying a USB-A to USB-C adaptor while we were there in order to rectify a problem that we had discovered earlier on the way up: the HR-V has charging ports that are USB-A, but we didn’t realize that we didn’t have enough cables that were compatible with Elyse’s devices to charge Elyse’s phone, which took USB-C. We had plenty of cables with USB-C on both ends, but not USB-A to USB-C aside from the one that I used to power my phone and connect to Android Auto. Additionally, Dollarama did not sell a USB-A to USB-C cable. They sold everything else with a USB-A end on one side, but not that. Figures. So we got an adaptor in order to patch that problem prior to getting a dedicated cable for that purpose later on once we got home.
We also briefly checked out the Lush store at Devonshire Mall. That wasn’t too exciting, as it was exactly the same as a US location – just with Canadian pricing. But at least we were able to wash our hands.
Leaving the mall, we started making our way to Bulk Barn. However, we spotted a Harley-Davidson dealership on the way, so we made a quick detour in there in order for Elyse to acquire a poker chip. This was a rare opportunity for her to get one from a Canadian location, so we made it quick, since we were starting to run against the clock a bit, as the bus that Elyse wanted to take ran with a 60-minute headway, and thus missing it would have meant waiting another hour for the next one.
Bulk Barn was exactly as we expected: a small store that sold grocery items, largely out of bins where you scoop and bag your items, and then it’s sold by the kilogram. This location was bigger than the location that we visited in Toronto, and had a decor that made heavy use of yellow. With the HR-V with us this time, and thus lots more space than we had in July, we were ready to take it on.
One of the aisles at Bulk Barn in Windsor.
Various food products sold by the gram.
Red-dyed pistachios. This was my first time seeing pistachios that had been dyed red. The practice of coloring pistachios red, intended to hide stains caused by older harvesting methods, had largely gone out of style by the nineties as harvesting methods evolved that prevented these stains from occurring. Most pistachios that you see nowadays are the seed’s natural color.
Bouillon cubes in an upper bin, sold by the gram like most other products in the store.
Rolls of Rockets candy in a bin at Bulk Barn. Rockets is the name for what is known as Smarties in the States. In Canada, Smarties are a completely different candy that more closely resembles M&Ms. The two candies were developed by different companies in different countries, and the chocolate Smarties have never come to the US because the other Smarties manufacturer holds the “Smarties” trademark. It’s too bad, too, because the chocolate Smarties are quite good, and it’s not like they would be the only food brand to trade under a different name than in its home country. After all, Eclipse is Excel in Canada, and Sunkist is C’Plus in Canada.
Canadian packaging for Calbee Harvest Snaps at Bulk Barn. Items like this were sold by the package, and not by mass like the stuff in the bins. Elyse loves these things, and she gave our friend Tristan the nickname “Crunchy Loop” based on this product. Now we know that in French-speaking Canada, he would be “Anneau Croustillant”. Technically, according to Google Translate, that’s “Crispy Ring”, but considering that this is the term on the package, we’ll go with it.
(And in case you’re wondering, “Crunchy Loop” is “Boucle Croustillante” according to Google Translate.)
At the end of the visit, I got some dried mixed berries and some peanut butter hot chocolate mix, while Elyse got some stuff of her own. Not a bad haul.
Then we headed back over to the transit center in Windsor, where I deposited Elyse in order for her to catch her bus to Detroit. She took the minimum amount of stuff with her, while I carried everyone’s stuff over in the HR-V. So at this point, I was unsupervised for a little while. Kyle was making his own way over the border later on, and Elyse was on her way, but it wouldn’t take me that long to go over, and I didn’t want to wait around. So I drove around a bit, and ended up entertaining myself with some road signs that we didn’t have stateside.
A cluster of school-related parking signs on Victoria Avenue for Immaculate Conception Catholic Elementary School.
“Pedestrian X” (i.e. pedestrian crossing) signage on Victoria Avenue.
From there, I started making moves towards leaving Canada and returning to the States. Like Elyse and Kyle with the bus, I would go via the Detroit-Windsor tunnel as well, though I stopped to visit the duty-free store on the way out. The duty-free store was nothing special as far as these things went. There was a section near the front with a lot of Canada-themed merchandise, there was a section with candy in it, and then big sections with fragrances and liquor in them. I didn’t see a section for cigarettes, which surprised me, because duty-free stores are about the only place in Canada where cigarettes are allowed to be displayed openly (but I may have just missed it). Most of the time, they’re hidden out of sight. I didn’t buy anything at the duty-free store this time, and I also only stayed at the duty-free store for about ten minutes (and five of those minutes were spent going to the bathroom).
Finishing up at the duty-free store, my last photos on this visit to Canada were of the same subject as the last photos in Canada on the Ottawa trip: the HR-V.
The HR-V, parked at the duty-free shop just before I went through the tunnel to leave Canada.
Then I drove through the tunnel, and I was back in the States, right in the middle of downtown Detroit. I don’t know about you, but there’s always a certain element of finality to it when departing Canada by road. Once you cross back into the States, you are back in the States, and Canada is over.
The first order of business after exiting the tunnel was to get through US customs. I rolled up in the HR-V, gave the officer my passport, and he asked me where I was traveling today. I responded, “We are going to Chicago.” I had forgotten that I was alone at the time, and so the border officer’s next question was, “Who’s we?” Then I had to explain that Kyle and Elyse were taking the cross-border bus separately. He asked me why they weren’t traveling in the car with me, suggesting that maybe they didn’t like my driving. I had to explain to this man what a transit enthusiast was, and why they wanted to ride the bus rather than private transportation. He also asked why the car was full of luggage. I explained that we were traveling to Chicago, and that we had stayed in Windsor because we got a better deal on a hotel there compared to Detroit. Then it clicked with him: we weren’t crossing into Detroit just for the day. We were traveling, like, traveling traveling, and we weren’t going back into Canada any time soon. After that, all was well. He gave me my passport back, and I was on my way.
Having cleared customs, the next matter was to call Elyse and find out where she was. As it turned out, I was right behind her bus as we entered Detroit, so finding her was easy enough. In fact, I spotted her on the bus when I pulled up alongside it at one point.
I also couldn’t help but notice the license plate on the bus, where the reflective coating had almost completely worn away. Clearly, for the license plate to be in that rough of shape, that bus had been around a while.
At the end of the bus route, I scooped up Elyse, and we were on our way to The Henry Ford out in Dearborn, eschewing a ride on the Detroit People Mover in the interest of time. After all, The Henry Ford was the reason for this northward turn up to Detroit and Windsor in the first place (otherwise, I could have saved time and just gone straight across Indiana without detouring into Michigan), and I was not about to miss it by dawdling around elsewhere. Kyle wasn’t that interested in seeing The Henry Ford, so he opted to stay in Canada for a while longer and would catch up with us later.
The drive to The Henry Ford was mostly freeways. I couldn’t help but notice that state routes in Michigan used diamond shields similar to state routes in North Carolina, except that Michigan shields have an “M” in the top of the diamond, while North Carolina routes have just the plain diamond. But then it amused me that most of the signs on the freeways that we were on used a plain diamond for Michigan state routes, without the “M” adornment. Made me laugh because without the “M”, they were essentially signing North Carolina routes, even though I guarantee you that was not their intent. I suppose it’s similar to the way that on freeway signage, Maryland state routes typically omit the “MARYLAND” writing on the shield, leaving the top section blank.
An example of Michigan state route shields, near The Henry Ford. The shield consists of a diamond with an “M” at the top.
Welcome to The Henry Ford!
At the ticket counter, the price of admission was $30 each, plus $9 for parking. I asked the guy: can I get a discount for having a photo in the museum? I figure, the worst thing that he could say is no, so it’s worth a try. I did get a discount: he waived the $9 parking fee. Cool!
In the museum, our first mission was to find my photo. However, on the way in, I stopped to get some photos of the car that President John F. Kennedy was shot in.
The Lincoln Continental limousine that Kennedy was riding in during his fateful visit to Dallas. The car was heavily customized for presidential use when it was first built, and underwent further modifications following the assassination.
And then we were on the hunt. Ultimately, we found my photo in a display about the Interstate Highway System with a bunch of other photos, maps, illustrations, and other memoabilia.
This is the display where my photo appears, discussing the Interstate Highway System. It contains my photo of Breezewood from 2006 at center right. My name is superimposed over the right side of the photo, and it’s captioned, “Small cities of food, gas, and lodging chains arose where major highways intersected. This is Breezewood, Pennsylvania, 2006.”
While we were there, I got a selfie with my photo. This is like “proud parent” stuff for me right here, seeing photos that I created then go out and do big things in their own lives.
With that matter of business taken care of, it was time to go out and enjoy the rest of the museum.
“Simple Simon and the Pieman” neon signage, used as an icon for Howard Johnson’s restaurants. The motor lodges used similar signage depicting a lamplighter.
Holiday Inn Great Sign from 1960, the centerpiece of an exhibit that included a replica of a Holiday Inn guest room from the same period.
Reproduction of a Holiday Inn guest room. Aside from the vintage furnishings, I was surprised at how austere the room looked. The layout was mostly like a typical hotel room today, but I was surprised to see that concrete wall. After all, no hotel today would ever make a room where the cinderblocks were visible to guests.
First-generation Plymouth Voyager minivan from the 1980s. This vehicle was also sold as the Dodge Caravan. The modern equivalent is the Chrysler Pacifica.
The bus where Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, fully restored and on display.
A vintage Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. I had never seen one of these in person before.
When I dipped into a restroom for a quick pit stop, I was impressed by the vintage quality of the space. It was very old, but also very well maintained. So I got some photos of it.
Finishing up at the museum, we dipped into the gift shop for a quick look, and then we were on our way again. We headed over to the Amtrak station nearby, where we reconvened with Kyle. Elyse was more than a little bit salty with me when she found out that Kyle had ridden the Detroit People Mover, and by “salty”, I mean “really mad”. I quickly determined that if I wanted to have any peace on this trip, we had to go back to downtown Detroit and ride the People Mover. I wanted to do it anyway and only skipped it earlier because of time constraints, but now we that weren’t so time-strapped, it made enough sense, even though it would cause some delay in our getting to Chicago.
For those not familiar, the Detroit People Mover is a rail system just under three miles in length that runs in a loop around the downtown area of Detroit. It operates on a single track, and a complete loop takes about 15 minutes. Not bad. We boarded at Fort/Cass, and did the complete loop. I got some photos, as well as video.
The entrance to Fort/Cass station.
My fare token for the Detroit People Mover.
The platform at Fort/Cass station. Platforms here are relatively short, as the Detroit People Mover is not a large system, and does not run long consists.
Trackside signage at Fort/Cass station. The lower sign is provided in multiple languages along the length of the station.
Our train arrives at Fort/Cass station.
Inside car 11 on the People Mover system.
Departing Huntington Place station.
Traveling from West Riverfront to Financial District. The Ambassador Bridge and the skyline of Windsor, Ontario are visible in the distance.
Traveling from Financial District to Millender Center.
Traveling from Millender Center to Renaissance Center.
Traveling from Renaissance Center to Bricktown.
Traveling from Bricktown to Greektown.
Traveling from Greektown to Cadillac Center.
Traveling from Cadillac Center to Broadway.
Traveling from Broadway to Grand Circus Park.
Traveling from Grand Circus Park to Times Square.
Traveling from Times Square to Michigan Avenue. The People Mover’s maintenance and storage facility is visible to the right of the track.
Traveling from Michigan Avenue back to Fort/Cass.
Our train departs Fort/Cass station.
I think that we were all surprised to encounter lots of costumed individuals riding the system on this particular evening. Unbeknownst to any of us prior to this, Youmacon, an anime convention held annually in Detroit, was going on at the nearby Huntington Place convention center, and people were coming and going from that event on the People Mover. So our ride was a bit more colorful and festive than we might have otherwise expected on account of that.
When we got back to Fort/Cass, we quickly returned to the HR-V and hit the road. We had about four and a half hours’ worth of driving to complete before we could put head to pillow, and it was already getting dark. Our route would take us all the way across Michigan, then around the south end of Lake Michigan through parts of Indiana, and then finally across Chicago before arriving at our hotel in Evanston. This was a long drive, and we had to complete it, and I wanted to make some semblance of good time while doing it.
We did, however, make some stops along the way. I had wanted to get out of Detroit and make some downrange progress before getting anything to eat, and I had kind of mentally penciled in Ann Arbor as a place to stop for food. We got off at an exit that had a lot of food options, and headed over toward those food options. I think that Chipotle was our original intent, but then we got a bit sidetracked. We spotted a Meijer, and made a pit stop there, intending to get gas for the car and food for us.
The pumps at the Meijer gas station.
The HR-V gets a drink (and after taking orders from me all day, I suspect that she needed a drink). She had the house regular that they had on tap.
The exterior of the Meijer store. I strongly suspected that the exterior architecture of this location was unconventional for the chain, though I had nothing to really compare it against.
The produce department at Meijer. I was impressed by its large size, even when compared to a Walmart Supercenter.
Elyse and I were a bit surprised to see liquor being sold at Meijer. Turns out that in the Midwest, it is common for liquor to be sold in grocery stores. I knew that Illinois did it, but I didn’t realize that other midwestern states did that as well. In Maryland, alcohol is generally not sold in grocery stores except under very limited circumstances, and in Virginia, beer and wine may be sold in grocery stores, but liquor is only sold in state stores, and then West Virginia allows beer and wine to be sold in grocery stores, but not liquor. And then there’s Pennsylvania, which is just a very strange state overall, and its alcohol laws are no exception to that.
We all took a look at this Ford Flex out in the parking lot as we were leaving, and we all were left wondering how a car could get this filthy on just one side like that.
Unfortunately, there was nothing really at Meijer that was suitable for eating on the go – at least not at that hour. So we returned to the original plan of going to Chipotle, and I laid in a course for that on Maps. Then we spotted a Panda Express right around the corner from Meijer. A quick poll of the group found that no one had any objections to Panda Express, so that was that, and we had “white Asian food” for dinner. Elyse got a standard Panda Express combo with a couple of entree items and a heaping portion of either rice or lo mein, Kyle got whatever he got, and then I got myself an order of Kung Pao chicken.
On the subject of the Kung Pao chicken, it’s funny how things change. When I was younger and going on those biweekly trips to DC like I used to do, I would get Panda Express at Pentagon City Mall on a fairly regular basis, and I could eat all of those little peppers in the Kung Pao chicken like it was nothing. On this occasion, I popped one of those peppers, expecting nothing of it, and I was practically dying. We’re talking nose running, eyes watering, the whole bit. Clearly, bodies change over the years. And Elyse and Kyle made fun of me for this.
My fortune read, “Your love life will be happy and harmonious.” This one didn’t really work with the “in bed” joke that I still like to do, because one’s love life and “in bed” tends to go together normally. So that was lame.
Finishing up at Panda Express, we were off. There’s nothing quite like driving for several hours across a large, flat Midwestern state in the dark, and that’s what I did, continuing our westbound trek across Michigan via I-94. We traveled for another hour, going 71 miles to Battle Creek. There, we stopped at a Walmart. Like Austintown, this was a conversion store, i.e. it was built as a 1990s-era pylon store, and then was later expanded to the Supercenter format in the early 2000s. We stopped here to use the restroom, plus pick up a few miscellaneous supplies. I needed to get more gallon-sized packets of water enhancer to put in my water bottle, so I got a few boxes of those, which would keep me for the remainder of the trip, plus I would have some for home.
Finishing at Walmart, we hit the road again. We completed our westward moves across Michigan, and continued to follow I-94 as it turned south towards Indiana. When we crossed into Indiana, we also entered Central Time, meaning that we gained an hour. Surprisingly, there was no sign to denote the time change. The only way that we knew was because we had researched this ahead of time, and knew that all of Michigan was in Eastern Time (save for four counties on the Upper Peninsula), and that the part of Indiana that we would be entering was in Central. Apparently, when you’re crossing this boundary, you’re just supposed to know. Meanwhile, on the HR-V, the clock on Android Auto changed not long after my phone cut over, and then for the dashboard clock, I had to go in and manually tell the car that we had changed time zones.
After about an hour and 40 minutes’ driving time, we stopped at a Speedway gas station in Chesterton. This was a quick gas-and-restroom stop, where everyone either onboarded liquids (in the case of the car) or offloaded liquids (in the case of the humans). I also viewed this as a last-opportunity gas stop, because gas prices in Indiana were about the same as everywhere else, while the price of gas in Illinois (at least in the Chicagoland area) is far more expensive than it is elsewhere. Therefore, might as well fill up here and save a few bucks.
I also got a quick photo of the HR-V as a progress shot to share out on social media.
And so it began, as we did the final hour and some change to Chicago. I couldn’t help but think of the old line from The Blues Brothers: “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses.” We continued along I-94 from Chesterton and then onto I-90, continuing around the lake shore and past Gary, and then we saw the big overhead sign that said “Welcome to Chicago” on it. I had never realized before now that the city limits of Chicago extended all the way out to Indiana. I had seen this same sign from the railroad tracks on previous trips via the Capitol Limited, but I never knew that this was also the state line.
Driving through Chicago was an interesting ride. We took the Skyway, which transitioned to the Dan Ryan Expressway (and rejoined I-94), which subsequently transitioned to the Kennedy Expressway. We stayed on the freeway until we got to Dempster Street. From there, we took various local roads the rest of the way to our hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn in Evanston, arriving just before 12:30 AM local time.
The Hilton Garden Inn was not unfamiliar to me, as I had stayed there three times before, in 2007, 2011, and 2013. However, this was my first time driving there, as Mom and I had always traveled by train on our previous stays. I parked right in front of the hotel, and went to get checked in. When we arrived, I received the biggest surprise of the trip: we had gotten a free upgrade, so instead of the junior suite that I had booked, we were in room 625, which was their “presidential suite”. In other words, they gave us the best room in the house. I was blown away by this upgrade, because I was absolutely not expecting it. I found out later that the presidential suite is not sold on its own merits very often (it can only be booked through the hotel’s sales office), and is most commonly given as a free upgrade. The reason that we got it was because we were staying for five nights, which was longer than most of the people staying around that same time, as the hotel was largely occupied by families attending a children’s hockey event somewhere nearby that weekend. The hockey people would leave on Sunday, while we would be there until Wednesday morning. Therefore, upgrading us for our longer stay meant that they could sell another junior suite for someone else’s weekend stay. Works for me, and we got a whole lot more space than we had anticipated, which worked out well.
The large conference table with seating for eight. We ended up using this as both a dining area and a work space for our computers.
Living room area beyond the dining table. The couch was a fold-out, and this is where Kyle slept.
The bedroom was huge, and came with a king bed. It was essentially a standard hotel room in and of itself, with chairs and a large desk in the corner, adjoining the living/dining room space. I had initially figured that I would use the desk in the bedroom for my laptop, but ultimately, that desk went unused as the big dining table became the focal point of the space. The suite’s bathroom was located off of the bedroom, near the front (behind the camera in this view).
The room also contained a large tiled vestibule at the entrance that I never photographed, which contained a door to the adjacent guest room, to make the suite two bedrooms instead of one if needed. All in all, I liked the layout, though it also felt like there were some parts of it where the architects had a lot of space that they didn’t quite know what to do with, as both the vestibule and bedroom felt like they were a lot bigger than they ought to have been in order to fill space in the floorplan.
By the time that we got settled into the suite, it was late, and we had been driving for hours, and so while we had thought about going somewhere in Evanston to get food, owing to the late hour, we opted to just get something from the hotel’s little pantry and then call it a night. There were things that we were planning to do the next morning, and we needed our sleep.