Christina and Robert's Cross-Country Trip: Part 4, Michigan & Illinois

In Windsor, Ont. we ate at a really good Chinese place where we had eggplant and tofu stuffed with shrimp, a soft-shelled crab, a nori shrimp roll, and a deep fried spicy quail which was excellent. We spent the night most of the way across MI at a Motel 6. Tuesday we went to a state beach on the shores of Lake MI and went swimming in the warm water and climbed a 240 ft. sand dune, which was hard and exhausting on a hot, sunny day.

Tuesday night we pulled into Urbana, IL. Chris and Kemal took us out to an "Australian" steak place and then we rented From Dusk till Dawn--interesting, but schizophrenic movie. We stayed at Chris's, and on Wednesday ran a bunch of errands and ate blizzards before cooking a nice dinner for them. Chris took us to meet two of her friends after dinner and then we went to see Armageddon on opening night--really good movie.

Thursday we picked Aurora up from day care and brought her to Chicago for Chris, who was meeting us there later that day. We played the excellent aunt and uncle, feeding Aurora a lunch of ice cream only at the Dairy Queen, then candy for dessert in the car ride up to Chicago, which passed off without disaster except for a half-eaten tube of chapstick that Aurora really seemed to like the taste of. Oh, and one very hyped-up, very exhausted little girl who arrived at Uncle Don and Aunt Loretta's house with us. We visited with them in the afternoon, and after Chris met up and Dave's girlfriend Candy joined us, we all went to Uncle Don's favorite Chinese place nearby for dinner.

After dinner Robert, Chris, Dave, Candy and I went bowling and almost got thrown out of the alley when Robert and I tried to be nice to his big cousin and buy Dave a beer in a pretty bowling-pin shaped bottle. The beer-police of the alley came over and demanded to see Dave's ID, which would have been all right normally, except he didn't have his license with him for a complicated set of reasons, and they wouldn't accept any other ID to show he was 26. (He really is.) So they went to take the beer away, not even letting Chris drink it, and we were all annoyed. On Friday Uncle Don and Aunt Loretta had to leave midday to go to a wedding they had committed to a long time ago, but Dave made us excellent omelets in the morning and we hung out with him and Candy that day. They bought us a beautiful new CD-stereo for Norman, and Dave and Robert puttered around installing it while Candy and I went shopping and brought back lunch.