First 4 Days of our First Family Vacation

Here we are, on our first family vacation. We are currently in Pittsburgh and we are about to start our 5th day of our nine day trip. So far the trip has been a blast as you can see here by our pictures (I will be updating this link as we continue on with our trip). 
So far we've had an absolute great time. Toby has been a really good road tripper. He's enjoyed his hotel stays, he's even sleeping in. I wanted to quickly summarize what we done each day so far.


Day 1 - Lena, Zeke & Driving to Chicago
Before we could start our trip we were greeted with the news that Mark and Katie had little Lena that morning. So we headed over to Waconia and celebrated with Mark and Katie and their new miracle. It was fun to see how excited Marky was. I know how uncomfortable he is around babies, but it was great to see how in love he is with his new babe.

Next on the pre-trip checklist was Zeke's first birthday party. Toby was excited to attend this cousin's birthday, he was bummed that mom wouldn't let him eat any frosting though. Zeke is the first of five "1st" birthdays that we will be attending this summer/early fall. It was amazing to not only see all the people that Mike and em had over, but that almost everyone had at least one kid with them. Parties multiply fast when kids are included. I can only hope for a nice weather day for Toby's party, because not everyone will fit in our house other wise.

At a little after 2, we hit the road. The destination was Chicago. We stopped in the Wisconsin Dells for supper. We just did Subway, but this wasn't any Subway, this was some sort of magical Subway. This Subway had the regular restaurant area, but then it had additional seating on the opposite side of the restaurant. This section had tall ceilings and ceiling fans. Those two features are favorites of Toby, so through the entire meal he would shout in order to hear his echo and then he would stare at the ceiling fan. So needless to say that was Toby's highlight on the trip down.

At 9 we arrived at our hotel which was just outside of Chicago. We met up with Jeff and Julie, chatted for a few minutes and headed off to bed.

Day 2 - Lincoln Park Zoo, Navy Pier & Driving to Cleveland
Our day began just north of downtown Chicago at the Lincoln Park Zoo. I guess I've heard people talk about it before, but never paid much attention to what they said. I thought visiting a zoo would be fun for Toby, since we haven't taken him to the Minnesota Zoo yet. Honestly, in my mind I was picturing that this zoo was going to be similar to Como Zoo: small, dirty and depressing. It was none of those three. It was tons of fun for everyone. It was fun watching Toby as he was learning new animals. I could only imagine that he thought most of the animals were more fun and playful than his lazy beagle at home.

We had one other destination in mind for the day, so we left the zoo after exploring slightly over half of it. It is definitely on my list of things to do again in Chicago and I highly recommend for families. As I mentioned, the other destination that we had in mind was the Navy Pier. Jeff has never been before, so we headed south towards the giant Ferris Wheel. We walked up and down the pier like every good tourist. We took pictures at the edge of the pier like every good tourist and we got some good pictures of the skyline like every good tourist.

Since we were in tourist mode, we finalized our trip by getting something to eat at The Goat Head. Interesting name I know, but it is fairly famous. President George H. W. Bush ate their while he was President and SNL created an sketch based on the restaurant's theme. The restaurant is essentially a burger place, they have other things on the menu, but at any given time there are hundred or so patties on the grill. The guy at the counter says "Cheeseborger, Cheeseborger, Cheeseborger. No fries, Cheeps". So we all figured that what we should get, except Steph, she got the single patty Hamborger. Boring! I got the quad patty! One we sat down and started eating, I opened my Serra Mist that I had with me and the bottle fizzed and exploded all over me. My shirt was drenched in Diet Serra Mist (thank goodness it was diet or that would have been soooo sticky). I laughed (after being embarrassed, then angry and then irritable), because everyone else was. Maybe the best part was that no one else in the restaurant saw it happen.

We headed off to Cleveland to spend the night. On our way there, we took I-80, which is a turnpike/toll road. I was amazed on how few exits there were along this road. Typically when I drive down I-35, or I-94 there are exits with towns every 10 miles or so (or so it seems). Here there was none of that. There was maybe 10 exits from Chicago to Cleveland and that is a six hour drive. To me it was amazing on how little civilization there was for such a long period of time of a major interstate.


Day 3 - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Progressive Field & Driving to Pittsburgh
This has been the casual day of the trip so far. We slept in and slowly got ready for the day as we only had 2 things to do for the day. Before tackling the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we decided to grab some lunch. We walked to an office building about 2 blocks away with a food court. I didn't recognize any of the restaurants and to be honest most of them looked shady. We decided to take the sit down restaurant on the second level. Place looked nice, so we entered. We must have caught them off guard because, one wrap, two salads and a cheeseburger took them over 1 hour to make AND there were MAYBE 8 people in the place. UGH! The important thing was that we had time, so we laughed and joked at how Jeff's ceaser salad was holding everything up.

After our interesting lunch we tackled the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was fun, but the bummer of it all is that you aren't allowed to bring in cameras. While it was cool and I'm glad we did it, that part wasn't cool. Either way, I enjoyed walking through the history of Rock and Roll. To me what stuff is fun and interesting. It is also interesting to see how music shapes and reflects how society is. You go from Chuck Berry and Ray Charles to Elvis & the Beatles to lot of the 70's hippie music. I knew it would be something that Steph would enjoy and I don't remember a lick of it when we were there 12 years ago on our choir trip.

We then headed to Progressive Field to watch the Indians take on the Reds. It was pouring when we walked over to the game. It rained really hard for 90 minutes and I was thinking to myself, self, I hope it stops raining soon so we can watch a few innings of baseball before hitting the road.  It wasn't a few minutes later that it did stop raining, so we took a few pictures of the stadium, Jeff and I each had a 1/2 pound hot dog. It reminded me of the big shots that the Metrodome used to have from Hormel. To be honest, it was delicious, but it still wasn't a Hormel dog. Hormel how I miss you.... In Progressive Field they have the Indians Hall of Fame in the stadium, very similar to Yankee Stadium, except there aren't any really good Indians. Looking through the list, they had some REALLY bad teams and didn't have exceptional talent until the mid 90's. Shortly after seeing that, the game started. To be honest, because it wasn't the Twins it was hard to care or get really invested. Each team scored runs early, so that was exciting at least. Toby was starting to get tired and we still had a two hour drive to Pittsburgh, so we left early.

Then we headed off to Pittsburgh and on our way, we talked about how dirty and "eh" feeling we both had about the city. Outside of coming to watch the Twins play, I don't have much of a desire to go back to Cleveland.


Day 4 - Our Hotel, Hanging out Downtown Pittsburgh & Twins Game
Yesterday was definitely the best day yet. We started the day off by checking into our hotel. We are staying at a historic place about 3/4 miles away from PNC & downtown Pittsburgh. I can't quantify it with words other than it is really cool. The set up of the hotel is bed & breakfast (which we will be partaking in as soon as I finish typing or if Toby wakes up), with a lot of old charm and character. I love how friendly the staff here is. Last night after the game we bought some frozen lemonade popsicles from the grocery store and offered them to the staff. They loved it. It will be a bummer to leave here in tomorrow.

After checking into our hotel and getting settled, we walked into downtown to have lunch with Jeff & Julie. They were staying at the Wyndom hotel, which is extremely modern hotel. It was fun to see how different of places we are both staying in, but how we both enjoyed it. They are on the 12th floor with an amazing view of the bluffs. After marveling at how different our two hotels are, we went out for lunch. My buddy Matt Finley & Man vs. Food host Adam Richman told us that Primanti Brothers is the place to go. Primanti Brothers is known for their sandwiches. Let me paint this picture for you. They have thick, soft & fresh bread, then is your meat, I naturally got roast beef. Then they pile on their clow slaw which is a very sweet slaw. Finally it is topped off with provolone cheese and tomato (I wanted my sandwich to taste good, so I had the tomato removed and onion replaced instead). In my opinion, this was one of the best sandwiches I've ever had. I loved the flavor of the roast beef in combination with the sweet of the slaw to the melted provolone cheese. DELISH! I'm not sure if Jeff and Julie were as impressed as I was, but I definitely want to go back before we leave Pittsburgh.

After lunch we wanted to go to the top of the bluff. In Pittsburgh they have these cable cars or trolleys that take you from the bottom of the hill to the top and from top to bottom. It's like a cable car mixed with a ski lift. Once we got to the top we were able to see some amazing views of the city. I maybe took 50 pictures trying to capture the view, the skyline and overall how cool it was.

After that we went back to the hotel and got ready for the Twins Pirates game at PNC Park.We arrived at PNC early to watch the Twins take batting practice and to get some close up pictures. Toby loved crawling around on top of the dugout. He was just a singing and a laughing the whole time. We also got to meet FSN's own Robby Incmikoski. We got to chat with him for about five minutes or so. He gave Toby his first baseball. Robby's a super nice guy and wanted us to have a great ballpark experience. I felt bad for the guy because game time temperature was about 90 degrees and he has to wear a suit and tie for the broadcast, but I guess those are the struggles for a guy who gets to travel around with sports teams for his job.

I was really impressed by PNC Park. I loved the view of the city from our seats. I liked that part of PNC better than Target Field, but overall, Target Field still gets the nod from me. Overall, I really liked the park and would like to go back again. Even though the good guys lost (and played terrible baseball), it was so much fun to come watch them play. Maybe we'll come out six years from now when the Twins play in PNC again.

There you have it, our first four days, very quickly summarized. Take a look at our pictures if you have a few minutes. I will get one or two more posts in before we arrive back in Minnesota on Sunday night.