June 3: Chicago, Illinois

Waking up to find the futon intact, we set out early in the morning for Niagara. Unfortunately, we were led wildly astray by the GPS, which was taking us to Niagara Falls credit union instead of the falls themselves. The twenty-minute journey took about an hour, as we hit every red light imaginable. However, we did get another great tour of all that Buffalo has to offer.

Niagara Falls was big. There was a lot of water. We beat the system and parked on the street for free instead of paying $10 at the parking lot. They had some cool pictures in the visitor center of when they de-watered American Falls in order to study its geological structure.

We would have loved to drive through Canada, and that’s what the GPS really wanted us to do too, but unfortunately we were not allowed into the country as passport laws had changed just days before. So we are also going to have to skip Tijuana too, to the relief of our mothers.

The drive to Chicago was green, sometimes flat, sometimes hilly. We found that: New York has the best rest stops. Ohio does not accept EZ-Pass. Indiana has very few exits.

On our way, we took a detour into Cleveland where we had a picnic and briefly visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center. We also spent a lot of time starting dumbfounded at the lake, marveling at how big it was.

As we approached Chicago, we got in the Chi-Town spirit by listening to some Kanye. We also almost died (last year Chicago had almost 600 caskets) when we were sandwiched in between a semi and a concrete wall, with another semi hot on our tail.

Kristina Chicago, our couch surfing host, led us through a maze of wooden stairs into her very cute apartment. We called it an early night so we’d be ready to hit the town the next day.