October 19, 2015 at 06:11PM by advodna_dave

After a rather stressful morning, at least I got to unwind by driving the trailer through heavy construction into downtown Chicago. Uh yeah, it's beer:30, or it would be except... See, the plan was to park at this downtown truck lot that also allows RV's to overnight, the huge benefit of which is that it's only 15 minutes from things like the Cloud Gate (aka: the big silver bean. Hmmm, we seem to be drawn this shape and color, huh?) as opposed to the other options which were over an hour outside the city. While online reviews prepped us not to expect much, we quickly decided (well not before paying actually) that we did not want to spend the night there amongst the stored trucks and tour busses. Well, I skipped a detail; I'm actually flying out of Chicago to SF this evening for a little over 24 hours and leaving the family somewhere to explore Chicago for a day. Yes, tonight of all nights. And no, I wasn't about to leave them in this empty lot in the middle of a major city. Still, we settled in for lunch in the shadow of the semis and gave Mae her second nap while we figured out an option. Thirty minutes into the slog back out of the city in rush hour traffic to an actual campground, the reserve light went on. I mean, what're you gonna do but laugh at this point? Having had the opportunity to push the trip computer way past zero, we just ignored it and pressed on (no, this part of the story does not come back 😉). We pulled into a really nice campground at 6:00 and had the hot water heater for my shower on, the oven preheating for pizza and the trailer leveled and unhitched by 6:30 as a spectacular sunset developed. Ann had the kids fed and getting ready for bed as I walked out the door to meet an Uber at 7:00 heading for O'Hare. I'd say we're getting pretty good at this staying flexible stuff! #whataday #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #rvlife #lifeontheroad