Tuesday August 12 (Chicago Lake Cruise/To East Lansing)

Yet another glorious day, blue sky all around and warm. I popped out for a coffee and some breakfast and took it back to my room while I finished packing and sorting my things out.

Yesterday, I had booked for a Lake Cruise today and the company gives free water taxi rides to and from the Navy Pier dock. late last night I had looked at the tickets and the person who sold them to me got the correct date on the cruise but yesterday's date on the water taxi tickets!! I knew I would have to sort this out at the stop where I would board.

The hotel have a room where we can leave our bags so I left mine and wandered off towards Union Station for the water taxi. After some animated conversation the guy gave me an Infant ticket for the trip down and I would sort the return trip out at the other end. I was unaccompanied. Lol!!

It was a great day to be on the river, it really is the life blood of Chicago. Once at the other end I was able to exchange the dud water taxi ticket for one dated today. 

One guy was apologising profusely for the poor customer relations, lol! We had to queue for the Lake Cruise for a while but finally the boat docked and we were able to board. 


It was very warm and the Navy Pier was very busy. So strange, as the last time I was down here this part of the lake was frozen and I was viewing the Snow Sculptures. 

As we headed out I noticed a blimp over the way, it moved around quite a bit and appeared over different parts of Chicago.



The sailing ship that had docked while we were waiting to board, was just leaving again. It was fairly calm on the water as there was only a gentle breeze. Chicago is certainly one of the more interesting cities I have visited and the buildings certainly blend in well together.

We headed south towards the three museums with Soldier Field behind them. It was a glorious day to be out of the water and many were taking advantage of it. 

It was also a good "seeing" day and buildings in the far distance round the lake shore wee clearly visible. All too soon we were heading back towards the Navy Pier and the dock.

There is a lock between the river and the lake and it is through this that water is allowed to flow into the river. The whole flow was changed some years ago and the difference in level between the river and the lake must always be between one and four feet with the lake higher. The lock will assist any boats wanting to move between them.

The Navy Pier was used by Navy Pilots to practice landings on aircraft carriers during WW2, apparently the lake bed is littered with planes that did not make it, lol! Being fresh water, the planes do not rot away the same way they would in salt water.

I am sorry if some of the photos are on an angle, that sometimes happens on a boat, LOL!

Soon we were back at the dock and I wandered through Navy Pier on the way back to the Water Taxi dock. The tall, black round, building is typical of so many of the glass buildings. It has runners going from top to bottom and a window cleaning machine uses these to travel up and down and clean the windows. It must be going non-stop, lol. I would hate to be one of the people charged with cleaning those windows that are still cleaned manually!

After one final trip on the river, I ended up by Union Station and made my way to the hotel to pick up my things and pack my backpack. The guys outside grabbed me a taxi and I made my way to the station, only a short trip but with fairly heavy bags worthwhile.

On board the train ahead of time and we departed right on the dot of 4 pm. We had a couple of hold ups and then a major while we were sitting alongside I90, the Chicago Skyway. We were on the freight line and a freight train had stopped ahead of us. We finally reversed to take a parallel track, we went faster backwards than we had for some time gone forwards, lol!! We had another slight holdup before merging onto the Amtrak Michigan an line and by this time we were 50 minutes late and had not even reached our first stop of New Buffalo, MI. This is on ET so we needed to put our clocks forward one hour when we did reach the stop. By the time we reached New Buffalo we were one hour late, lol!

I decided a coffee was needed and this meant a trip to the Cafe car. There was a young lass on the seat across from me with a really young baby. I asked her is she wanted something from the Cafe. She said she was starving so gave me some. Only to get a sandwich and a Pepsi for her. Good deed was duly carried out and she sure seemed to enjoy the sandwich!

At Kalamazoo we were one hour and fifteen minutes late, lol!! There was a beautiful sunset but it was behind the train so no good photos. I hopped out briefly at Battle Creek to take a photo. We finally arrived at East Lansing at 10.20 pm instead of 8.54 pm. LOL, Amtrak does not disappoint!