I’ve developed a habit when visiting big cities of staying somewhere outside the city, and only venturing in after rush hour in the morning, and that’s the pattern I followed with Chicago.  I stayed the night before at the Indiana Dunes State Park, waking up in the morning to this view across Lake Michigan.  If you look very carefully, you can just see the tallest buildings of Chicago on the horizon, about an hour’s drive away.

I don’t think I “did” Chicago the right way, and certainly there was a lot more there than I got to see in my visit.  The main struggle I ran into in the morning was finding parking anywhere near where I wanted to go.  My primary destination was the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), and I was finally able to find parking at the museum, about a three mile walk away.

The walk along the waterfront and then through the city was worth it, though.

I passed by the aquarium and the planetarium, planning to visit them I in the afternoon on my way back to my truck.  Outside the aquarium was a man with a fish.  It was called Man With Fish Garden.  Naturally.

Looking to the city center from the aquarium, you can see the Willis Tower on the right.

I was a bit disappointed by one of the key landmarks on my way there.  The Buckingham Fountain was decidedly unwet.  Maybe it’s still closed down for the winter, but I imagine that it looks beautiful when the tap is turned on.

I found Chicago to be a unique combination of a shiny areas and run down areas.  I’ve found this with other Midwestern cities as well, most recently in St Louis, where there’s a feeling of both modernity and history.  I thought that this image of the rather grungy train station under the modern high-rises captured the idea well.

Finally, after a couple of detours, and stopping for lunch and caffeine on the way, I got to the Willis Tower.  I stood out on the street just staring up at it for a while.  Having just been to New York City a few months ago, I wanted to see how it compared to other tall buildings I’d seen.  It’s not as historic and classic as the Empire State Building, or as stunningly inspirational and emotive as the new One World Trade Center, but it’s got a character all of it’s own.  Its dark façade and blocky construction evoke a sense of strength, solidity, and power.

According to Wikipedia:  “The Willis Tower, built as and still commonly referred to as Sears Tower, is a 108-story, 1,450-foot (442.1 m) skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois, United States.  At completion in 1973, it surpassed the World Trade Center towers in New York to become the tallest building in the world, a title it held for nearly 25 years and remained the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere until 2014 and the completion of a new building at the World Trade Center site. The building is considered a seminal achievement for its architect Fazlur Kahn. The Willis Tower is the second-tallest building in the United States and the 16th-tallest in the world. More than one million people visit its observation deck each year, making it one of Chicago’s most popular tourist destinations. The structure was renamed in 2009 by the Willis Group as part of its lease on a portion of the tower’s space.”

Although it was warm enough, I was getting a bit tired of being blown around — it is indeed a Windy City — so I went inside.  I bought my ticket for the observation deck on the 103rd floor, and wound my way through the information displays that keep tourists distracted on the way to the elevators.  And speaking of elevators, I learned that there are 104 elevators in the tower, moving at 1,200 feet per minute, and some of them are double decker.  I had never heard of that before, but a friend tells me that they are sometimes used in tall buildings, so that the cars access only odd or even floors.  I learned something new!

Although it was only a bit cloudy while I was outside, it started to rain by the time I got to the observation level.  Thank you, Midwestern weather.

Fortunately, the wind that brought the rain was just as quick to drive the clouds away for a while, so I was able to get some spectacular views after a few minutes.

I could look back across Lake Michigan.  Just behind the red building you can see the Buckingham Fountain peeking out, and to the right of that are some white tented rooftops that are near the museum and aquarium where I parked.

The picture below seems to capture a lot.  On the left is Route 90 heading north, the road that I would be driving to Milwaukee the next day, in the lower center is a fork on the Chicago River, to the right is the lake, and in the distance is the rain storm moving up the coast.

It’s actually easy to lose perspective on how high you are in the tower, because it feels like looking down on a still life, or a scene from a movie.  I had to keep reminding myself that those buildings down below… they’re really tall!

On one side of the observation deck there are glass boxes extending out from the side of the building.  Unfortunately, people are stupidly excited about getting into these, and so I had to stand in line for my turn while girls lay down on the floor to strike sexy poses while their boyfriends took pictures of them.  *Sigh*  But eventually my turn came, and it was worth the wait.  I could look down 1,354 feet (413 m) to the street and river below!

Helicopters and clouds were beneath me.

The unfortunate thing about visiting the observation deck was that, although the line for the elevator up wasn’t long at all, the line to get back down again was about a half hour wait!  Well, at least there was something to look at while I waited.

Although it didn’t seem like I had done a lot, I was tired by the time I got down out the clouds, so I exited through the gift shop and sat down with a drink for a few minutes before going outside.  It was raining lightly when I did, and I didn’t have my raincoat with me, so I bought a cheap umbrella for my walk back.  I took a different route back, around something called the Central Loop of the city, and past Federal Square with the rather massive Alexander Calder sculpture of… something.  My umbrella blew inside out for the first time while I was taking this picture.  Windy City.

As I went on, the rain got worse.  Under the elevated rail, my umbrella blew inside out again.  Windy City.  I was becoming unpleasantly damp.

By the time I got back to the aquarium, I found that it closed in only one hour, at 5pm.  The museum also closed then, so I wouldn’t have time to really see either.  The planetarium had already closed at 4pm.  Huh.  Well that was inconveniently early of them.

Well, I was cold and wet and tired, so I decided that I’d had enough of touristing in Chicago for the day, and went back to my truck.  Unfortunately the leaky tire that had been plaguing me since Kansas was acting up again, and I had to limp to the nearest gas station to reinflate it, looking like a drowned rat the whole time.

Look, I liked Chicago — what I saw of it — and it had a very cool vibe. But neither the city nor I were at our best that day.  I was aiming to get back to Nashville for Easter, so I didn’t stay another day to see more of it, but I definitely want to go back.  To see the aquarium and the planetarium maybe, and other famous areas of the city, maybe to take a gangster tour!  But on the train.  Wearing a raincoat.