Midwest Visit Part 1: Yorkville
Brooklyn is a Big Girl now
I made a trip to the Midwest back in April. I got to meet the newest member of the family, three month old Baby Brooklyn. I usually go back to the Midwest at most once a year, but since babies change fast Sandy planned another trip for September. We would stay in Yorkville with Shannon, Jimmy and Brooklyn, drive up to Door County and meet up with Lynn and Dan for a few days of sightseeing, visit Sandy's mom in Wisconsin and even catch a Brewer game in Milwaukee. We would fit a lot into one visit.
From O'Hare Airport we have a limo service that we always take to get to Yorkville. It's a lot cheaper than a taxi and way less stressful than renting a car and driving ourselves, especially since we landed about 5 pm and would have to deal with rush hour traffic. Usually it goes smoothly but this time there was one major annoyance. The driver had a terrible cough and was hacking constantly all the way. We felt sorry for the guy for being sick but did not like the idea of being in a closed car with a sick person for over an hour while he was coughing constantly. We did not want to get sick, especially while traveling.
Eventually we made it to Yorkville and forgot all about our driver. Sure enough, Brooklyn had grown a lot since my last visit. Besides just being bigger, there were a lot of other changes. Last time she could barely sit up on her own. Now she could sit up, reach out, grab stuff, and of course always put it in her mouth. She was just on the verge of crawling. In fact, she started the day after I left.
Jimmy, Shannon and Sandy at Kuiper Family Farm
It was the last week of the regular season for baseball and the Brewers were in first place. We watched each game as their magic number to clinch the division got smaller. We watch almost all of the Brewers games with our MLB.TV subscription, but it doesn't work in Yorkville. I guess it is too close to Wisconsin where tv stations have the broadcast rights. A local blackout didn't stop an old IT guy like me though. I just connected through a VPN and we could watch the games just fine. They couldn't tell where we were. And we weren't really cheating since the local tv stations didn't even show the game. They just had the Cubs and the White Sox. We even had tickets to go to a game at Miller Park, but that would be later in the trip. The high point while we were in Yorkville was watching the Brewers beat the Marlins 16-1. They scored twelve runs in the second inning, only one short of their all time record for runs scored in an inning. That game definitely qualified as a laugher.
Gourmet Grilled Cheese food truck - count me in
On Saturday afternoon we took a trip to Kuiper's Family Farm. It was a beautiful day and there were loads of people there. They were first of all a farm, with fields of pumpkins, sunflowers, apples, various flowers and (not in season right now) tulips. They added a lot of other attractions, mainly for kids: a train ride, slides and bouncy cushions. There was also a huge country store for the grownups, as well as several food trucks. It was a good place for a family excursion with kid(s), and that was us. We did limit what we did since each attraction had a separate fee for admission.
Naturally we started with the most important thing first - lunch. I immediatly went for the Hippie Gourmet Grilled Cheese Sandwhich food truck. Everyone else opted for Mexican food. I chose well. There was no line and I was done eating before anyyone else even got there food. And of course my lunch was better too. Then we topped it off with ice cream. An excellent start to the day.
Brooklyn and Shannon in the flower fields
Next we went to the sunflower fields. They were quite extensive and the sunflowers were all six feet high or so and very densely packed. There were a lot of photo ops and we got some good pictures of Brooklyn. Of course that was easy since she is very photogenic. Each ticket entitled the person to pick one sunflower. They even let you borrow a clipper for cutting your flower. We wanted to get some nice ones, but of course all the flowers near the path were already picked clean. You had to fight your way into the middle of the field to get good ones. Shannon and I were the only ones brave enough to plunge into the jungle to get our flowers. Good thing I was determined because it wasn't easy. We did manage to get impressive flowers and were able to return to the path safely with them. We were both proud of our hard-won trophies and carried them around very carefully for the rest of the afternoon.
Shannon plunges into the jungle to get her sunflower
Of course we had to go through the country store. It was the main attraction for all the grownups, after the food of course. Rather than a big, square building it was long and relatively narrow. You had to enter at one end and wind your way through all of the departments. It kind of reminded me of Ikea. Once you were in, you had to go past every display in order to get to the exit. Nobody seemed to mind though and people were buying lots of stuff. In fact, when we got to the end, there were long lines to check out even though they had at least ten stands going. It took quite a while, which was annoying, but fine, we got a lot of good stuff. But then just as we were about to leave the building, Shannon noticed that they had charged Sandy for two of something that she only got one of, and it was a significant item. So we turned around immediatly and pointed it out to the cashier. This caused a major problem.
I got one!
First, she had already started to check out the next person. She didn't know how to back out of what she had done and there was a whole cart to go to finish it off. So after fumbling for several minutes she called for a manager, who took several more minutes to arrive. She was able to pause the current customer, then go in and reverse the charge on our items. This took quite a while and it did not make the ten or so people who were waiting in line for this checkout very happy. We all know what it's like when you go to the grocery store, have many lines to choose from, and you end up picking THAT line, the one that has a problem. While we waited for the manager to fix the problem, we were getting the evil eye from everyone that had to wait. If looks could kill, we would have died a thousand deaths. Finally everything was fixed and we were able to leave the store. We did, quickly. By that time we all agreed that we had had enough and that it was time to head for Jimmy's truck and go home.
Gramma Sandy and Brooklyn
That was our only excursion. We spent most of the time at home, spending time with Brooklyn. Besides Brewer games we did watch a movie - Top Gun: Maverick. I had seen the original at a cinema in Zermatt on a rainy day while waiting for a chance to climb the Matterhorn, so was glad for a chance to see the new version. It was fun to watch. Of course, I would like any movie with lots of airplanes zooming around. I did have to turn off part of my brain to enjoy it though. The plot was dumb. The long introductory sequence with the hypersonic test flight had no connection to the rest of the movie except to show that Maverick was still rebellious (still a maverick after all these years). Stealing the F14 was completely unrealistic, although I had to admit that it was a cool throwback to the original movie. And the attack on the enemy target was completely stolen from the original Star Wars. They had to hit a tiny bunker (Death Star exhaust port) after flying down a long canyon (trench) while fired at by anti aircraft missiles (laser canons) and worrying about the appearance of enemy fighters ("stay on target!").
Afterwards we watched a documentary on the making of Top Gun: Maverick which I found more interesting than the movie itself. It showed that all of the shots of pilots during high g maneuvers were actually filmed with the actor in the back of an F/A 18 while it was actually doing high g maneuvers. Impressive.
Our visit to Yorkville had been fun. Next morning we picked up our rental car and started the drive up to Wisconsin and Door County.
