A Gunslinger wrote:duchess of malfi wrote:Depends on whether or not people are bringing children. Chicago is fine for adults - Wisconsin Dells is more fun for a bunch of littles or teens in the summer.
But I spent more than a week in Chicago/Madison/Dells last summer...so would prefer a different location for this summer for a Great Lakes area get together.
Where'd you go in madison? That's very near to where I live now!! Fun wasn't it?
We spent a few days In Chicago (King Tut exhibit, White Sox game ,and Chicago Blues Festival), then went up to Madison. We ate dinner in a really nice Italian restaurant downtown, walked and drove around town, spent the night in a hotel, then went to Spring Green to visit Taliesin the next morning. Taliesin is
awesome. Then we visited the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, which was a wonderful place for people who love birds.
We got see a pair of whooping cranes with their chick.
Then the Dells. I cannot say enough good things about teenagers and the Great Wolf Lodge. My husband and I actually got to go out by ourselves for dinners because we couldn't drag the kids out the pools (which were all surrounded by life guards so the kids were perfectly safe).
At the Dells, one of those private dinners was at the most romantic restaurant we have ever been in - the Ishnala Supper Club. It was this ultimate log cabin with all sorts of decks and picture windows overlooking this pretty little lake in Mirror Lake State Park. The food was good, and the atmosphere was wonderful. There were tree trunks coming up from the floor and going up through the ceiling - yes, the restuarant was built around a grove of trees!
After the Dells we went back to Chicago (Cubbies, Blue Man Group, Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry).
The one thing I should say about Chicago is that the last two times I went there (last June and last January) I was really harrassed by very agressive pan handlers. In the worst June incident this guy (who was pretty obviously on mind altering substances) followed us all of the way from the Field Museum back to our hotel on Michigan Ave. He harrassed us the entire way. It was actually sort of frightening. We were checking out that morning anyway to go to Madison, and when we pulled out in my Jeep about an hour later, he saw us and came running up to yell some more, and was very unpleasant.
I had a very bad and scarey experience with another such guy last January.
So if people want to get together in Chicago, please be aware that the city is filled to the brim with street people these days. Most of them are very polite and harmless. But a few are people you just do not want to run into. And it does not seem to matter which part of the city you are in - these poor people are everywhere.
And I say that as someone who lives near Detroit, goes there all the time, and has never had an incident like the ones in Chicago happen in Detroit. I have been going to Detroit for more than 40 years and have never once been frightened there or had a negative experience. The last two times I went to Chicago, aggresive pan handlers scared the pee out of me.