After a good night's sleep, another day begins without fanfare. A few hunters left way too early, so we stayed in bed. This is not a working vacation. As usual, the chef prepared an awesome breakfast. Eventually, the chef even got dressed. This is one major advantage of RVing: bedclothes are just fine when you don't even have to emerge. After a while, we took another little stroll around the park. It is a nice park, and this time, we walked through the kiddie play area. They have a good collection of playground toys and games. There's even an RC car track. (The cars are available for rent from the office. Fancy that.) We might even have to try that out. You see, Natalie beat me at checkers last night, 2 out of 3, so we ... read more

We decided several months ago to do this experiment, and wait until kids should be back in school. (Vacations seems to be more peaceful when children are in school.) You see, when I retire in a couple years, our temporary plan if everything continues well, is to sell our house and move into an RV and travel until we find a place we want to settle down. It really wouldn't work well if we buy the RV, use it for a month or two, then decide we dislike the whole exercise. So, if we learn about RVing first, we won't make that mistake. After reviewing RV rental outfits online, we decided to rent from Ryan's RV Town, and are quite pleased with the choice. They are very friendly and considerate, and they rent late model, quality ... read more

After an excellent night back in a bed, we have a day to explore a little bit of Sacramento. Because old town Sacramento is a short walk from the train station, we plan to check our bags for the day and check out "Old Sac" as the locals call it. There is a railroad museum right there, and it seems fitting to visit that museum today. And that's what we did. The navigator failed to confirm the route before we started walking, so we ended up walking all the way across the Sacramento River before realizing we missed a turn somewhere. So after spending a little while appreciating the park on the other side of the river, we found our way back to the right side of the river. The railroad museum is right there. If ... read more

During the night time run through Nebraska, they announced a delay because Burlington Northern Santa Fe told them to hold while BNSF repaired some track ahead of us. We still rode into Colorado in the dark, but ended up being 2 hours late most of today. It's not a problem for us because we'll still arrive by 4:00 pm or so in Sacramento and stay the night before catching the midnight train to Seattle. We had breakfast in the dining car with a delightful Amish couple from Dalton, OH. They were taking an epic vacation of their own: With two other couples, married at the same time, they are celebrating their 40th anniversary with a series of train rides around the country too. We enjoyed talking about some common experiences, and learned a little about the ... read more

For our final day in Chicago, this has been just about everything we could ask for. We saw the city from the Willis Tower and got properly drenched on the open top deck of a double decker tour bus. Our plan for the day, after yesterday's tour, was to get off at the Willis tower stop, tour the tower, then ride to the Adler Planetarium and check the clock before deciding what to do next. The weather forecast suggested increasing chances of rain as the day progressed, but weather guesses are guesses. Sometimes, they're perfect, and today was one of those times. We didn't know that until later. We did stop at the Willis Tower and visit its Skydeck. This is the observation floor, which is the 103rd floor, 1,353 feet high, with three glass floored ... read more