Chicago Visit

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I had the opportunity to go to Waukegan, Illinois to visit a supplier for my employer.  We had a great visit and it was beneficial.


There were two legs to the trip:  Hagerstown to BWI and BWI to O'Hare. 

The plane on the Hagerstown to BWI leg was a Cesna 402.  If you don't know what that is let me tell you this.  There is room for the Pilot, the Co-pilot and 8 passengers!  Very small for a commercial plane.


One of my co-workers, who was on this trip, is a recent college graduate.  This trip to Illinois was his first airplane ride!  So he got to ride in a small twin-engine prop plane and a larger Jet airliner.  We were looking for the little plastic wings that they hand out to kids to give to him for his first flight.  But we never found any.

On Tuesday evening we were able to go into Chicago and see some of the sights.

We went up the Hancock building, but there was a line to get a table.

We came back down and I took some pictures of the Water Tower.

Then we went over to Millenium Park Where we saw the following:

I don't know the name of these columns and fountain.  Can you help me out?

 The Millenium Sculpture, which is more commonly referred to as "The Bean".  This was a fascinating sculpture because it was polished to a mirror-like finish, which allowed the surroundings to be reflected.
 

I also don't know the name of this outdoor theater/stage.  Can you help me out here?

Dinosaur

Then we saw the Lions in front of the Art Institute.  Guess which image was made using the flash!  As a clue...I thought it was fascinating that the light from the tiny flash on the G11 only reached the Lion and did not reach the building in the background.

We were also able to see the Buckingham Fountain.  Unfortunately, we got there just as the band was finishing the last chorus of the last song of their performance.

It was so dark that I had to set the camera on the ground to have any hope of getting a picture that wasn't blurred beyond recognition.  I was also trying to get the moon in the picture.

Rumor had it that they were shooting Transformers 3 in Chicago this week.  You can see from this picture that they had wrecked quite a few cars in the making of the movie.  I haven't seen the earlier Transformer movies, but I may have to go see this one so that I can try to find this scene!

All in all it was a great trip, but I am glad to be home!