Made a spontaneous trip to Elkhart IN, with my son this weekend. Had a blast! He had a camper to drop off in Elkhart, but we backtracked to Chicago to have a hotdog at Superdawg and do a little exploring. Unfortunately they had bad storms and there was massive flooding on the west side of Chicago, so Superdawg was out of the question. Instead, we rode around a bit, in the storm, trying to find a place to eat real Chicago style pizza. After finding nothing, but national chains, we looked up some pizza places on the gps and just randomly picked one that was in South Holland. Oh my goodness we lucked out.
Our find of the weekend was Aurelio's Pizza. We ordered one small, thin crust, pepperoni and sausage and one large, thick crust, Canadian bacon and pineapple. They were both really good, but we decided that the small one was the best. We were so hungry, by the time we got our pizza, that we couldn't wait to get to our hotel room to start eating, so we broke into the smaller one. It was so hot it burned the roof of my mouth, but man it was awesome. We just drove through the driving rain, grinning, while stringing cheese from our mouths. We both agreed that even though we didn't get do most of the things we planned to do, the pizza was defiantly worth the trip. Since he goes by Chicago no less than three times a week, he's going to randomly pick other places to sample the numerous pizza places around town. I'm sure that we'll do Aurelio's again, but I'm looking forward to trying out Gino's or Lou Malnati's when I ride with him again the 1st of Sept. That trip will be a leisure trip, were we'll head on up to WI to explore a bit of that state and see the House on the Rock in Green Springs.
The rain was so bad, that there was power outages several times Saturday night. We just crashed in our hotel and finished our pizza. We left for home around 4am Sunday and just took our time coming home. We would venture off at random exits and drive around just sight seeing. I got some great pictures. One, of a cornfield that leads up to a church, in the mist, and it is veryyyyyyyy Children of the Corn ish. I really hope it turns out, because it has all the elements of being a very cool shot.
I love the creation of GPS! You can veer off the beaten path to explore and not worry about finding your way back. This gives you the freedom to experience areas that you often miss, that offers charm and surprises. We stopped to gas up and get some travel supplies in Effingham. I was psyched about this, because this is the town that Ben Fold's refers to in his album "Way to Normal". I will note that I did soundtrack our trip with various tunes from Ben Folds cd, Fall Out Boy, Alkaline Trio and Sufjan Steven's album"Illinois". I know it sounds silly to listen to tunes about IL or by IL groups while traveling through the state, but it did give our trip a kind of special atmosphere. I would choose songs to suit the scenery and I'm gonna brag a bit..................I did a bang up job.
Illinois is a beautiful state, but has wayyyyyyyy too many cornfields. ;) I was surprised to see there are a number of wineries along the way. I think I will research them and visit a couple on my way through next time.
I was able to add a new state on my list of places I've visited, as well as a new major city. I will be excited to really explore Chicago on my next visit, but for this trip, I'm just happy to be able to say that furthest I've traveled for pizza is 630 miles.
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