Chicago Trip

Spontaneity has its time and place*. And this past Saturday was our time. My dh and I found out a week ago Sunday that there was an amazing exhibits on maps at the Field Museum in Chicago that would end on January 27th. Then most of us got sick and we didn't think about it. On Friday, once we realized that we were all well, it wasn't going to snow much, and there were still tickets available, we decided to go to Chicago.

*(for 5 points, tell me which movie contains this movie quotes. 10 points if you don't consult the Internet for the answer!)

We got up at 6 am and were on the road to Chicago about 6:45 am. We made great time and were at the museum in time to have lunch there, see Sue...

..., the plants of the world exhibit, the mineral exhibit and of course more dinosaurs. We had to walk through a ton of evolutionary stuff which we didn't bother to read and went straight to the dinosaur hall.



The museum had some great fossils of insects, birds, and reptiles also. Since we had just studied how fossils were probably made, the children enjoyed looking at them.

I didn't get any pictures of the map exhibit because we couldn't take any pictures in the exhibit. It was an amazing exhibit. There were about 130 maps there. They ranged from small hand held maps to a giant atlas made for a German duke that was probably 4 x 6 feet! I don't know how he read it.

We saw imaginary maps like the original map from Treasure Island. We saw religious maps that pilgrims used when they went on pilgrimage. We saw many maps that were beautiful works of art. The one made by Leonardo daVinci looked like a watercolor painting. My favorite section (and my dh's as well) was the section which showed maps that made invisible facts visible. There I saw Dr. Snow's map that helped him determine that cholera was waterborne and not airbourne. We also saw three survey maps by presidents: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. We spent 2 hours in that exhibit. I was so glad that we went.

A definite added benefit of a quick trip to Chicago was a visit to my sister. On the way to her house, I took this great picture of the Sears Tower.

The children had a great time playing with Caleb, Kristin's 1 year old. It was a quick visit, but a fun one.