Chicago Trip: Part Five-The Final Leg

If you have been following our story, you probably guessed what happened to me next.  After eating some shady tamales that a random dude was selling at bars I developed a colossal case of dysentery.  I was miserable.  There was some debate as to whether it was the beers or the tamales that caused my condition, but I will never believe that beer would harm me, so it had to be the tamales.

As luck would have it, this was the day that we were going to walk around downtown all day on Michigan avenue and sightsee/shop.  Whee!  After a sweltering and extraordinarily bumpy cab ride we arrived at the Hancock center.  Pretty sweet building.  I hoped it had nice toilets...

96 floors up is the ovservatory/bar where we met Kebra S. and her son Baker.  By the way, the beers were 9 dollars.

Sweet view.

And another sweet view.

Wait. WTF?  There are spiders in webs up here!  How the hell did spiders get up here and build webs?  These spiders were on the outside of the glass!  How do they catch enough bugs to eat at this height?  Nobody who worked at the Hancock could tell me.  They all just shrugged and looked at me like I was an idiot.

After spending most of my time at the observatory in the lavatory (no view).  We proceeded to shop for like 4 hours.  That is, Shannon, Amy, and the Bandit shopped while I stood around looking stupid and asking where the bathroom was in each store.  From there is was dinner/beers at the Goose Island brewery.  Cool place, great beers, but I took no pictures cause I was concentrating too hard on not going to the bathroom anymore.

We (wisely) went to bed early that night and were on the road the next day by 9:30am.  At about 11, we stopped for lunch at the "world famous" old route 66 family restaurant in Dwight, Illinois. 

Which was right across the street from the "not so world famous" retro route 66 gas station.

Immediately we could tell the place was a dump.  Amy and the Bandit were not amused.

I ordered fries and a milkshake (my stomach was still a little iffy).  Amy ordered nothing.  The Bandit ordered breakfast (eggs, toast, hash browns).  The mikshake was meh and the fries were a blatant insult to all that is fry-holy. 

First of all, they gave me exactly 38 fries (of course I counted, this is science).  Second, the fries were the blandest, cheapest, most sorry excuse for fries I HAVE EVER TASTED.  And lastly, THEY COST $3.50!  I was astounded.  Family restaurant indeed!  The only reason we didn't get up and leave is cause the Bandit's $3.50 breakfast was actually very good so we let her enjoy it.

On the road through Illinois we actually saw a cornfield farmhouse!  That was a treat compared to the drive going the other direction...

Going through Missouri, we saw an authentic route 66 tourist trap and pulled over.  Teepees!  I have never seen a teepee with a satellite dish, so we had check it out.  A man and woman came stumbling out of a trailer like building behind the teepees and told us that to go into the teepee (which was actually a store selling "authentic native American implements") we had to pay 2 bucks each which would go towards any purchase. 

Scam, but what the hell?  When we got inside the teepee store we realized that the couple running the joint were REALLY stoned.  We could easily smell the weed on them.  They wouldn't let me take pictures inside, but it was impressive.  Lots of crap you see at trucks stops.  And there were no prices on anything-you just had to ask and it was clear that they would just make up a price on the spot.  We were not surprised, but we still felt duped.

It was a fitting end to our journey, since we didn't get Chicago to bring back headbands (yet).