Happy Friday!
Up this morning about 6-ish, and decided to forego the hotel’s
breakfast and instead had our own Rotolo
de Pizza, which is really wonderful, whatever the time of day! As we had only as far as the northern suburbs
of Chicago to get to, we didn’t leave the hotel until about 9, and then decided
to drive through downtown Madison, as I’ve never seen it before.
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| Yerkes Observatory grounds, with one dome in the background |
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| Yerkes office building between two domes |
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Well … not sure why we didn’t take photographs, because
Madison, Wisconsin is really lovely! It
is located between two lakes, and is home to the state capital of Wisconsin, as
well as the University of. Really an old
city, with lots of Victorian and brick houses – all in lovely shape and housing
various parts of the University. If it
weren’t for truly long and horrible winters, this might be an ideal place to
retire!
From Madison, we headed south east, taking highway US-12
most of the way to Lake Geneva, home of Yerkes Observatory (in Williams Bay) where
Robert spent several of his earlier years.
We had quite a nice roots trip!
The Observatory is only open on Saturday morning for tours – and obviously
today is Friday – but we drove around the entrance circle and R was able to take some
photographs. The observatory (no longer
active) looks unchanged but other changes are evident. The observatory’s boarding house (run by Mrs.
Shott the mother, Mrs. Shott the daughter and Mrs. Shott the dog) and the
individual cottages (one was once home to the Zappalas) are gone.
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| Beautiful grounds! |
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| R's little cottage you can barely see behind red one |
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| Site of "The Office" bar and restaurant |
We then went to find the “little” house where he lived for
two years. It is still there, but there
were “No Trespassing” signs and R
didn’t want to bother anyone. So, we
have just a small photo of the house, sitting behind another. Went past the local bar/lounge [actually, the
site of the place I used to hang
out. The old building is gone. R] where he used to go to listen to the Riverboat Ramblers (a local Dixieland
Band), as well as the General Store – buildings still there, but now put to new
uses. And finally, out of Williams Bay
and through the incredibly kitschy and touristy town of Lake Geneva. Kids were in the water, and it looked like it
was getting geared up for another popular summer at the lake!
From here, we headed to Des Plaines, where we will be the
next three nights. We found the hotel –
a Hilton Garden Inn – where we used to stay when we visited R’s brother, Dick, who lived just a mile
or so away. Very nice room on the 8th
floor, and we even have a view of downtown Chicago, as well as plane after
plane after plane flying into O’Hare airport, which isn’t far away.
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| Williams Bay Marina -- where R used to play hockey! |
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| Williams Bay |
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| Old general store building |
As we have been on the road all week, I took the opportunity
to throw a load of clothes in the washer downstairs, and in a little over an
hour we had all clean clothes yet again!
Yeah!! By now it was about 3 pm
and while we talked about heading into downtown Chicago, we instead both took
well-deserved naps; very comfortable bed!
Up about 5-ish, and decided to head to the next-door casino for
dinner. The Rivers Casino was built when our hotel was still fairly new, but we
had never been inside. However, they
have both individual restaurants as well as a buffet, so we decided to take our
chances on the casino’s buffet.
About 2-block walk, and it is lovely and warm outside! Very pleasant! Quite a crowd in the casino, which is quite
attractive and smelled like smoke-free.
No line for the buffet, and honestly, the food was fabulous! Very, very tasty and lots of choices. Between the Italian meatballs and Asian food
assortment, not to mention everything from prime rib to turkey to tri-tip, and
amazing marinated mushrooms … I could go on, but will conclude with the fact
that the carrot cake was fantastic!
Stuffed, we waddled back to the hotel and now we are
definitely in for the night! Tomorrow we
will be out nice and early to get to the Field Museum, hopefully on public
transportation!
Also want to find a grocery store where we can get some
bottled water.
So – more tomorrow!
Much love,
m
xxx
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