train

So it isn’t actually my birthday yet, but due to a busy calendar Heather and I chose to take a day and celebrate my birthday a little early.

We both took last Friday off of work, with plans to be out and about all day.

Our intent was to start the day off by sleeping in. What actually happened was that we started the day by discovering what the building fire alarms sound like. As luck would have it, we found ourselves standing in the parking lot at 6:30 in the morning meeting some neighbors we hadn’t bumped into yet.

As you may recall from my last post, Heather had to contend with a smoke alarm last weekend. She is starting to think she will never again get the opportunity to sleep past 6AM.

On the bright side, this got us off to an early start.

We started with some amazing french toast Heather made. She has sometimes led people to believe that she cannot cook; it’s not true.

Our first stop after breakfast was Ledges State Park. The park is a beautiful little piece of geology that unfortunately had a lot of flooding last year. Thanks to the current economic realities facing everyone, including the Iowa Department Of Natural Resources, they haven’t been able to repair the stream crossings, nor clear the silt that now covers parts of the developed area.

Given that we were just there to hike, it didn’t really matter. We only hiked for about an hour, but there was enough vertical change to make our legs star to burn from all the climbing. It’s possible we are just out of shape, but I was surprised how much climbing there was to be had!

After our hike, we headed straight to the train station in Boone. The rides there don’t take you to a new destination per say, but we had heard good things about the Boone Scenic Valley Railroad. We picked up our tickets and ate a sack lunch while waiting for our departure time.

I didn’t remember to take a picture of our car, but it was the perfect way to ride on a warm(ish) fall day. It was a flat-car with railing around it, with two benches running the long way down the center facing out. We had a great view of everything!

The main attraction of the ride is the Des Monies River valley, that we crossed via the Kate Shelley Bridge. It’s a great view, well worth the ride out. We probably missed the peak fall colors by about a week, but I am in no way complaining, it was still a breathtaking view!

Once across the bridge we had a brief stop for reasons that were not completely clear, but it made a nice spot to lean out and snap this:

The train was by no means full up there, but there was a good turn out for a Friday afternoon.

From here the rest of the day was less notable, although no less enjoyable. That being said I don’t want to stretch this post out any more than I already have.

-Jordan

Heather and I drove from Des Moines Thursday night, to the western edge of the Chicago metro area. We stayed in Naperville, at a hotel with easy access to the train station.

Friday morning we took kind of a casual start, and were almost too late getting downstairs to get breakfast. I am really glad we weren’t though, because the breakfast room had those big Belgian waffle makers that clam shell open, and can flip over in their mounting. Combine one of those with good batter, and you have an amazing waffle! It was a great way to start our first day of a mini vacation!

Leaving the hotel, we managed to miss three different turns on the way to the “easy to get to” train station. In hind sight, it wasn’t hard find, we just missed some easy turns. We ended up missing the train by about ten minutes. The next train wasn’t due for another hour, so we decided to walk around the Naperville downtown.

Fun side note, calling the town “nap-ville” will get a rise out of Heather most of the time. 🙂

The weather was just warm enough to call it nice, and we really enjoyed getting to walk around the nicely restored / preserved downtown area. They have a little river that runs through the middle of the area, and some parks we looked at. After living in a snow and ice covered city for the last few months, seeing some green in the parks was really refreshing.

Next, we headed back to the train station, caught our train, and hit the city! The city, as it turned out, was rainy and cold, with a touch of fog. We worked our way over to Michigan Avenue (aka “The Magnificent Mile”) and kind of took in the sights. Our only real stops were the Disney store and the Hershey’s shop. Makes the trip sound less… sophisticated I suppose, but that’s where we stopped.

After some time looking at the shops and people, we headed out to Navy Pier. When we were last in Chicago, the place was a rather busy carnival atmosphere. On a cold foggy day it was more of a lonely eerie kind of place.

I really started to wonder what that kind of a day would be like for a local, it seemed strange to me to not be able to see the normal skyline at all. We could only see the first few buildings before the fog enveloped the city. It kind of made me wish we had a better camera, but then again a more robust camera would have been to big to lug around all day in the name of “just in case we see something cool”

At this point, the day was starting to get late, so we headed back down town to find some pizza before catching our train back to our hotel. Friday night is kind of busy as it turns out, and the wait to get a table was 30-40 minutes. We ended up in line between some former UNL students, and some current Des Moines residents. The world is just as small as people say I guess. Eventually we got a table, and some pizza.

Shortly thereafter, we discovered that eating what winds up being one inch of pure cheese in a almost pastry crust, isn’t quite as rewarding after you have walked five miles, and are cold and dehydrated. It was still good, but it hit a lot harder than expected. We really found this out when we started walking again, and had about a mile left to get back to the train station. It wasn’t like we were in pain, but we were moving a little slow, and it was becoming clear that we were going to miss our train again. Lucky for us there are taxis everywhere, so we managed to make the train with time to spare!

This is a rather large post, and I feel like I glazed over so many details. It does pretty much sum up day one though!

-Jordan

The Big Day

Chicago Day One