The Roaches in the Windy City

The weekend before Independence Day, the Roaches packed up the Family Truckster and headed to Chicago for a little mini-vacation. The highlight of the trip was our visit to The Lincoln Park Zoo where Parker got to see some of his favorite animals up close is this old-school urban zoo. The best were the monkeys. Parker is still talking about the "monkeys jumping" and "monkeys swinging." We stayed with our our friends the Treanors, who happen to live about three blocks from my brother George. We made the obligatory shopping trip to Ikea. George and I wandered the grounds of the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio and saw some of his houses in the immediately surrounding neighborhood in Oak Park. We had some great food, including Chicago style hot dogs at Portillo's, Chicago style deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's, beer from Two Brothers Brewing Company, and had some incredible ice cream at Matt and Connie Brown's Brown Cow Ice Cream Parlor in Forest Park. It was a great trip, but we were glad to come home. Maybe next year Parker will be up for the dinosaurs at the Field Museum!