It has been a long while since I have gone on a trip. The last one I can think of that wasn't just a 4 hour ride north for a baby blessing or baptism was when I went to Sweden. That was over a year ago. It had been far too long.
A few months back I had received a phone call from my brother in Bristol Virginia saying that he was moving from Virginia to Seattle, Washington. He asked if I would like to come on out and help them drive back! Uhhhhhhhhhhh.......that doesn't seem like much of a vacation but I said yes. As the weeks grew closer I decided it would be the perfect opportunity to visit my father and my step- mother on their mission in Nauvoo! I found the easiest way to meet up in Nauvoo was to fly in to St Louis and rent a car then drive the remainder of the way. I thought to myself "why don't I make the most of it and do something fun while I am
out there?!" So, instead of flying out to St Louis I decided to fly into Chicago (after all it was about the same distance in driving and I could hop aboard a bus that would take me straight to Nauvoo) and spend a few days out there before I met up with my brother and father.
My next steps were to find the most economical way to get there and then to plan what it was I was exactly going to do while there. I booked a hotel in the heart of Chicago (about 3/4 a mile from the theater district) and purchased myself a ticket to see Wicked. GHEE!!! :D I also found I could save myself about $80 by taking a red eye flight on Jet Blue. The catch was this though:
I would have to leave at 11:45 on the 31st of July and fly out to JFK airport (New York) then backtrack to Chicago. Strange, but I figured I could just sleep through the flight and then arrive in Chicago bright and early to have the whole day to myself. Here is what my schedule looked like for my whole trip:
-Tuesday July 31st at 11:45 fly out to JFK airport
-Wednesday August 1st 3:45 am transfer from JFK to O'hare (Chicago)
-Same day 8:15 am arrive in Chicago and play the whole day
-That evening 7:30 pm see Wicked
-Thursday August 2nd 12:45 pm board Greyhound to Nauvoo (with one transfer stop in Davenport)
-Thursday evening meet up with family and attend Nauvoo Pageant and participate in other activities
-Saturday August 4th leave from Nauvoo and drive home with expecting to get back on Sunday August 5th in the evening.
Well, the trip did NOT go quite as I planned. Things started off wrong when I had my sister drop me off at the airport and I realized that the ipod I had brought had only sync'd up 1/3 of the music I wanted to. DOH! Oh well. It wasn't the end of the world. I was actually extremely excited to be traveling on my own that I soon forgot I didn't have all my music with me. In fact as I was walking through the airport I was listening to "With a wink and a smile" by Harry Connick Jr. and I actually found myself doing a little ditty as I was walking to the terminal. I made myself smile. I waited for my plane to board by reading
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azcaban (wait for my next blog about my HP experiences). What I thought was going to be a breeze of a flight turned out to be awful. I discovered soon that I cannot get comfortable on leather seats and it is very difficult to sleep between 2 people. I think for that 4 1/2 hour flight I slept for maybe 20 minutes. I ended up sleeping better on the second flight cause I had a whole row to myself and I could lay down.
I arrived in Chicago a few minutes early and went to pick up my luggage. Guess what? My luggage was lost. Turns out it didn't make the transfer. After talking to a very unpleasant lady who made it feel like it was the biggest burden in the world to do her job and fill out a claim of lost luggage I decided to head into the city to explore. I did have my backpack with me with my camera and the main things I needed so I wasn't too distressed.
Chicago was beautiful! So very big and exciting! I got off the L (train) at Washington and just started exploring. I was just beaming to be on Vacation that I had really disregarded t
he little sleep and lost luggage. I found myself quickly being attracted to the strangely shaped buildings and I became very camera happy. I wanted to see the city better so I took a river boat tour and took many pictures. Let's see......what else did I do? I ate in a mom and pops shop for br
eakfast, I visited the Sears Tower, I went to the park and visited the gigantic silver jelly bean, soaked my feet in a stream, took a taxi just cause, visited each theater in the theater district, went to the zoo, and took time to visit the art institute of Chicago. I didn't have much time at all to stop and rest. I really didn't want to! I did start to get nervous however in finding that I still had no word on my luggage. I didn't really want to attend Wicked that night in jeans and a t-shirt. Turns out that at about 6:45pm I got a ph
one cal from my hotel saying my luggage had been found and delivered. I RUSHED home and took a quick shower and put my suit on and made it back to the theater in record time!
Wicked was better than I could have imagined! The set and technical aspect was what I was most impressed with. The cast did a fantastic job and especially the leading ladies. Glenda (Guh-lenda) especially. After the show I walked back to my hotel for the night.
I called my bro the next day to find out how things were coming along and it turns out that he was more than a day behind in leaving from Virginia so they would not be able to pick me up from the bus stop that evening. My dad would probably be able to I figured so I didn't worry. As I got onto the Greyhound I realized why I don't really to travel by bus. It really was my only resort unless I wanted to pay out my ears for a car rental. The bus was supposed to leave at 12:45 but was an 1 and 1/12 hours late in leaving the terminal. If that wasn't bad we blew a tire in a city called Dekalb. It took 2 and 1/2 more hours to fix. I started to realize there was a problem. I was supposed to be in Davenport for a transfer to my final destination and we already were almost 4 hours behind. Greyhound had to put me up for the night in a hotel (I was surprised to find they would offer to do this) and then put me on the bus in the morning to my final destination. I didn't want to chance the bus again so after my nights stay in Davenport I had my dad pick me up there. It took a few hours to drive to get me but had he not been able to I would have been stranded most the day.
I am going to just get to the end here pretty quick because I am not feeling the need to be
any more long winded than I already have. HA! I will tell you th
at I loved my visit to Nauvoo and it was one of the more uplifting and spiritual experiences I have had since my mission.
My brother finally got to Nauvoo on Saturday night (2 days late) and we were able to visit with my dad for a time. The next morning after church we set off on the road. We really didn't get away till about 5:00pm (we also took a detour to Mt. Pleasant, Iowa to visit my
aunt). We drove most into the night and stopped in a place in Nebraska for the night. The next morning we set off and drove all day and into the night. I drove a good majority of the time. Just a few miles out Evanston Wyoming we blew a tire on the Uhaul truck(I don't know why I have difficulties with tires). Oh, I DO have to share something that I thought was
pretty interesting. For most of the drive through Nebraska and Wyoming I was the ONLY one that did not have service on my phone. It ticked me off a bit because I am an avid texter and I was being denied thumb exercise. It turns out that when we blew a tire however that everyone else's phone did not have service but mine did! That allowed us to call Uhaul to have them send someone out to fix the tire. It is funny how things work out that way. I felt stupid for complaining about no service until then.
At 6:00 am on Tuesday the 7th we pulled into our final destination. Home at last! What a trip! Even though lots and lots went wrong I would do it all again in a heart beat!
Thank you for reading.
working for the last 14 months and have tossed me out on the street
