After 2 days with lots of walking to stretch out my legs, I felt ready to run! Elise initially wanted to run with me and dad, but after falling the night before, we decided it was best for her to rest her ankle. I found a 1.7 mile loop around Miller Meadow that was just a 5 minute drive from our Airbnb. Ty looked and it was the same place he had found a disc golf course at so he went with us. We walked outside to rain and Ty joked that he didn't want to go anymore, but he did. It was a little chilly and all I had was a tank top so he let me borrow his hoodie to run in. I ended up taking it off about a mile in and running in my tank top, but put it back on to walk. He played a round of disc golf while dad and I ran. It felt so good, I wanted to keep going, but made myself stop at 2 miles. Then I walked until dad finished. We saw 2 deer while we were running and then in a different area I saw 2 more deer while I was walking. There was also a dog park and it was fun to watch the dogs playing there.
I like to visit an Independent Bookstore when we are on vacation so I found a website that listed all the Independent Bookstores in Chicago by neighborhood. Based on location and the description of the bookstores, we landed on Exile in Bookville. It was amazing and one of my favorite bookstores I've been to! The owner had lots of recommendation tabs for books I hadn't heard of before. I also had the added excitement of Elise pointing out a Lore Olympus book and realizing it was the newest volume that had just released in early October. Carter wanted to read it first so he went off to read it while I was still looking around the bookstore. I came across Gillian Flynn's books and saw they were signed. I decided to replace my copy of Dark Places with an autographed copy because it was signed with silver pen on a black page. When I got home I was thrilled to discover my copy of Dark Places was one I'd gotten from a little free library so it wasn't in very good condition! We went to a food hall for lunch and got Chicago dogs with poppyseed buns at Chicago Dog House. I was excited to see there was also a Stan's Donuts. They gave us a mini chocolate coated donut after the race and it was so good, I wanted to try some of their other donuts. Mom and I picked out 5 different donuts and we cut them all so we could each try a little piece.
Elise had come across The Color Factory when she was looking at places in Chicago. She really wanted to go and I didn't think it looked very good, but I ended up really enjoying it! There was a room with birthdays and when you picked up your birthday, it gave you a color and told you information about yourself which was cool. There was also a room where you sat across from someone else and drew them without looking down. I died laughing when I saw Ty's drawing of me and laughed until I cried. One room had confetti which was a lot of fun. Elise was most excited about a room that was a giant ball pit, but was disappointed in it. It was pretty shallow and not very much fun. The Color Factory was inside the Willis Building. You can see in the picture dad took of us on the escalator that Elise started wearing her otter hat tied around her waist like a fanny pack and kept her drawing pad which mom and dad bought her at the bookstore and a pencil which we got for her in it. When we were on the train or waiting somewhere, she would get it out to draw. While we were walking from one train station to the next I commented on what a pretty walk it was and how much fun it was to walk in this area. Carter said I kept saying that and I said, yeah, I guess I just really like this area. He said, no you always say that no matter where we are walking, in a city or in nature. I said I guess I just like to walk. Then he said, you are just always happy. It was cute.
Our last stop was the Navy Pier. We were done at the color factory around 5:30 and decided to go straight there. We wanted to ride the ferris wheel in the dark and figured it would get dark around 6-6:30. On our way we stopped at Ross to get sweatpants for Elise and Jeremy who were both wearing shorts. Then we got an Uber to the Navy Pier because there weren't any trains that ran over that way. We ate at Harry Caray's restaurant and it took long enough that we weren't finished until 7:50 and the ferris wheel closed down at 8, so we missed riding the carousel. While we waited on our food, we checked out the shops and I was excited to find a drawing of the bean as an art print for our vacation art wall. We also found a Garrett's and got Garrett's mix of popcorn which is cheddar and caramel mix. It was delicious. Ty got a Chicago dog at dinner and was proud he had 4 hot dogs in 2 days. After dinner we walked over to the pier so we could look at the ferris wheel and the view. The view was totally worth it!
Step Count for the Day: 21,396
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