Boxing in the Burbs

This past week has been a crazy one!! Matt & I set aside this past weekend (over a year ago!) to head to Chicago. After setting that time aside on the calendar, Matt found out that Mark & Sue (fellow letterboxers from the east coast) were going to be in IL around the same time. Matt was so excited to meet with them along the Hennepin Canal - Wizard of Oz series. He boxed with them most of the day last Wednesday. Here is a picture of Matt with Mark & Sue...as well as some beautiful pics of the sunset & wildlife along the Hennepin.

Friday morning we dropped off the girls at school then hit the road to Chicago. We were optimistic about all that the day would hold. Matt had printed up a TON of clues - mostly quick drive bys - and he had promised me some shopping too! We got into the southern Chicago suberbs around 10:30 and started to figure out where to head for our first box. After trying to find one of the Twilight series boxes, we gave up. We later found out that we were in the wrong burb! It was craziness trying to locate that box and we are SO glad that we didn't have the kids with us because our nerves would've been spent! Onward & upward we drove. We were so excited to see the John Hughes series! We love his movies and it was so cool to be in the same areas where he worked with wonderful actors! Here is Matt standing on the stairs from Ferris Bueller's Day off...and again imitating Judd Nelson from Breakfast Club. We were also able to grab the Weird Science box. Lots of fun - of course, we'll have to pull out those movies to watch them again soon!

Another stop later in the day was "The Grove". What a cool place! Such a beautiful setting! We went inside to locate the box and found all of these animals! "Turtle Pond" was named after all of these turtles. Matt & I watched the turtles swimming around quite a while - amazing to watch! When we head back up to the Chicago area, we will be taking the kids here!! Once we got home, Matt realized that there is another box there too! So, we'll have to find that one when we go.

Matt & I thoroughly enjoyed our day - even with all of the frustrations! Luck wasn't on our side most of the weekend though. We missed out on a lot of boxes! We ended our day with a great steak dinner and shopping at the container store! : )

Saturday morning was devoted to a rock quarry tour that we had signed up for. It looked like a fun thing to do...however, after stopping and picking up breakfast, I suggested to Matt that I wouldn't be too disappointed if we passed up the quarry and worked on finding more boxes. We had such a nice time together the day before and we figured that we would be able to find some bigger series that day...hopefully it would be a more successful day than the previous one! Matt agreed (did I have any doubts!!) and we headed to the first box. After finding a few drive bys, we decided to head out to Palatine to find the "Cubs" series and "Trip Across America" in the same park. We knew that it was going to be a decent walk...but we were up for it (me being a Cub fan all of my life and both of us being geography junkies...we were excited!). 3 hours later, we had our 9 stamps!! It took us a lot longer than expected. We made mistakes, missed clues, etc. It didn't help that we were reading some of the clues in a backward route, so we are double guessing everything that we see. We are sure that we walked close to 6 miles that day! We ended our boxing at "A Good Year: 2010" by Atomic Beans. Due to light (or lack there of!), we were only able to get 4 of the 6 boxes. We ended our night with a wonderful dinner & ice cream with Atomic Beans! Thanks for putting up with us! Leaving the Burbs around 10:00, we arrived home at 1:30 am. Very tired and sore from all the walking (and sitting)! I was surprised to find out we found 30 boxes on the weekend...however, we probably tried for 50! It was a frustrating weekend in that respect. We're hoping to head there again before it's too cold and get a few more series with the kids...maybe visit a zoo or two also.