June 30-July 9: On the Road

Whenever I am washing dishes, I think of Chicago. I think of my dad's friend, Uncle Donald, who had an apartment in a high rise on the lake there and there was a mirror above the kitchen sink so you could have a view while you did chores. 

In Chicago, I learned how to eat lima beans and ate at an authentic Pizzeria Unos. A teenage dream. At that point in my life, I was a city girl born and bread and I liked the way Chicago citied. Since then I have driven by Chicago and imagined I saw it from across the lake.

We had a few good reasons for choosing Michigan and Chicago as our destination for this summer's family vacay.  Maybe we were even swayed by the idea of pasties and deep dish pizza. Maybe a Chicago dog too. Ultimately, the crystal clear waters of Lake Michigan swayed us.

We ate frozen pizza and leftovers the night before we left---as one should do. The first night's stop for dinner was for tacos from a chain and ice cream from a local spot. The next morning we found the most adorable local coffee shop. 

While camping, we made coffee and breafkast at our campsite every morning and ate dinner there too. There was a pizza and salad in Ann Arbor, pasties in the upper peninsula and snacks at various stops, but mostly lunch was a squished sandwich on a sand dune. We didn't start eating out until Chicago where we found our deep dish pizza and ate a hot dog with mustard at a baseball game which is as close to a Chicago dog as we could come. 

The best meal while traveling? I think we all agree it was the ramen at Ramen-San in Chicago after a day of touristing.