I don’t miss living in an apartment at all. Of course there are things I miss about having an apartment, like having a place to go to the bathroom or showering more than once a week (just kidding, I showered less than I do now when I had one). So I’m trying to think of ways to extend this road trip. Of course that means extending money, which seems to be impossible somedays. On a road trip, 3 days = 1 week. So when I think about three days ago, it’s like I’m thinking about last Tuesday. I don’t even remember what I did last Wednesday! Wednesday was practically a month ago!!!

Every state has it’s own accent, which is GREAT. Right now we’re in Wisconsin, where they say ‘backpack’ and pronounce the ‘a’ like the ‘a’ in ask - a backpack. Once again we’re not too close to the city, this is because either there are no campgrounds close enough, or we cannot find one close enough with Wifi. Not having the internet is a pain in the rear and I’m thinking about just giving in and signing up for a measly 5gb of upload/download bandwidth.

Mark and I have this problem called “We live next to New York City”. So we know most of what there is to know about NYC and expect all cities to be as great as it is. But no city is like New York City, and I found this painfully true in Boston the first five times we visited. Finally I realized that maybe Boston isn’t 1/8th as awesome as New York, but for Massachusetts, Boston is pretty great and has it’s own little flavor (and accent). But then we experienced Cleveland and all my hopes of enjoying a city for what it is, were smashed. We recovered from Cleveland in the countryside of Illinois for a few days and finally ended up in Chicago, from last Friday to Sunday.

I was in a good mood when we headed out there on Friday. Chicago and the surrounding areas are flat, so when you’re driving into the city you can see it from at least 10 miles away. That combined with the Metra running along side of our car, driving down some highway and I had a feeling Chicago might be more exciting than those other Non-New York Cities. “WOW! It looks like New York City!” Once we got to another section “Hey! This looks like Boston!” Then it looked like Philadelphia and Baltimore so I figured maybe Chicago is just Chicago.

We arrived at the Chicago Diner, a vegetarian restaurant. We were served tasty food by a bunch of hipsters who I suspect spend a lot of time looking in the mirror to look like everyone else (but guys, to your credit you all look good).

We really liked this section of Chicago, we were on N. Halsted St and there were plenty of boys loving boys but where were the girls loving girls? Have they been banned? Let me know.

Every city I go to has the same group of “goth” kids. Are they following us on this road trip? I don’t know.

Unfortunately it seems that many cities do not have campgrounds within thirty miles. This is true for both Chicago and Milwaukee. So we stayed at the WORST campground, 60+ miles from Chicago for two nights. We were stuck in traffic on our way to the city both days. Oh traffic, why must you waste our gas on you? We only get 14 mpg with this T@b towing behind us, wasting another 30 minutes by idling is not in our budget. After the second night we decided it would be best to sleep in the parking lot of the Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named in close proximity to the city. Closest one with overnight parking was an hour away.

Back in July we emailed ApartmentTherapy.com about featuring a story on our road trip. They said “Of course!” and even suggested we try meeting up with writers in multiple cities. The first city we reached, covered by Apartment Therapy, was Chicago. We received an email from Alex, one of AT’s Chicago writers. She told us we could park our T@b outside of her house on Sunday while we went to the city. It was only Saturday, but we needed a place to leave the T@b ASAP. We asked, and they said yes. Knowing the T@b would be professionally photographed the next day by Alex’s husband Chris, we took her in for a bath.

She was filthy from the first day we took her on the road. It might have been raining, I forget, but she’s always had a streak of dirt running up the sides. Kind of like when my brother was a baby, he sat down in a dirty diaper which sent poop flying up his back.

All clean!

We were supposed to head into Chicago around 12pm that day, I’m not sure if we arrived earlier than 8pm. Oh well.

Mark wrote “Sidewalks vibrated from high-healed women walking past clubs roaring with music. The spirit of the city tonight caught us off guard — we were giggling for hours.” What that translates to is we laughed at all the drunk people for hours. That’s what the Lincoln Park area of Chicago is like on a Friday night, filled up with single drunk people who are looking for someone to mate with, even if just for one night. My favorite drunk line of the night “What’s up with all these Ruff Ryders with no helmets!?” Even drunk people know you should wear a helmet while you’re riding your motorcycle, cool guys.

You know, the subway runs above ground in Chicago. Two stories high and they run right past apartments and houses. Just feet away. It’s amazing!

We drove around for a while looking for the Magnificent Mile. What a waste of my freaking time! Apparently Magnificent Mile = Too expensive for you, Katie. Also, it was just a tourist trap. So we went back to the area we enjoyed the day before.

The spring rolls were the only magnificence of the evening (because there was cream cheese in them) but the rest of the food was just ehhh. There is something about the Midwest, they have no freaking clue how to cook Thai noodles!!! Why do you prefer your Thai noodles al dente Cleveland and Chicago?! Why do you prefer to ruin a fabulous dish with hard noodles!!?

We found an ice cream shop a mile away and pigged out on some happiness in a bowl.

Hey guess what?! The next day Mister got a chance to enjoy some Chicago of his own!!!

At first the day was not going well. When a restaurant has outdoor seating but refuses to let a little Mister sit on their patio, I get upset about that. Then some store denied the Mister as well, claiming an associate was allergic to dogs. Oh right, because Mister is shedding his extremely long fur all over the place and rubbing on your face. Then we met some people (while handing out Emotibles), talked for a while and ended up having a good day after all.

Those people directed us down to the Wicker Park area of town and that’s where we ended our day in Chicago.

Under the elevated trains.

Wicker Park had a wicked awesome garden and fountain.

Mister is really into the road trip. He’s actually the best at meeting new people. Though he hates many of the new humans he encounters, he loves every new dog he meets (unless they try to hump him).

Here’s the little man, getting some diseases (according to my Aunt Sandy’s dogs, Petey Pie & Lady Sady)

We traveled all over Chicago looking for Chicago style pizza. We settled on Romano style pizza (but only a little piece). You see, Alex, her husband Chris and son Vincent did not only invite us to park in front of their house, allow us to sleep in front of their house and offer to take photos/write about Wanderful and the T@b….

…they extended the offer and invited us in for dinner.

Do you see that fancy table setting? You know that means the dinner of roasted vegetables on spaghetti, bread, salad and baked pudding was seriously DELICIOUS. So if you’re in the Chicago area, I suggest you stop over Alex, Chris and Vincent’s house. Nope, they’re not three brothers who make pizza, they’re a happy little family cooking up some fine meals….

…oh and fine entertainment (Vincent has a comedy act).

Mark and I left that night and headed toward Wisconsin. First on our list, Milwaukee. How could Milwaukee follow such an awesome city like Chicago!?! We found a good idea is to research a city before heading into it. So I began researching Milwaukee and found out it’s got the highest population of German immigrants in America. Do you know what I love?! GERMANY!!! Hooray for Milwaukee! And beer.

Once we got into Wisconsin, Mark and I drove past a sign that read Bong Recreation Area. A few minutes later we were driving through the thickest fog I have ever seen. According to the photo, it looks like a light fog, but in real life it was pretty bad, we were driving 20 mph to get through this stuff! Mark proclaimed he felt like an ice road trucker and I thought about how many people might get mad if they heard that.