The Amazing Adventures of los von ZauRunyon!: Chicago: Week 1!

After leaving Moscow, we drove as fast as we could to Billings, MT, Fargo, ND, and Aurora, IL. We stayed in Aurora with Ian's parents for about 2.5 weeks before heading on to Washington and the end of our odyssey!

Casual family portrait at Starved Rock State Park.

Guita is decidedly part sight hound. She loves looking over walls to see what's on the other side. In this case, she and Ian are looking at the Illinois River at Starved Rock State Park. Beautiful!

Guita takes Halloween very seriously. She loves it when children come to the door and ask for candy. Trick-or-treat never lasted long enough in Mexico, but in The Wheatlands of Aurora, I think she found doggy trick-or-treat zen. She did not enjoy wearing her bandana, but we'll work on that.

We visited the Art Institute of Chicago and had a great day walking through the museum. We saw all the best European art the Institute has to offer and we walked through the Modern Wing that is filled with... wait for it... modern art. Some of it is amazing and some of it less so (to my uncritical eye), but it was a wonderful, cosmopolitan day with a train ride at either end!

Ian's all-time favorite work of art: white enamel paint on a white wall. This particular artist got to Ian in a rather inelegant way! Ask him about it sometime; see if the adjectives still fail him!

Installation art: hard candies in a corner. Adults are welcome to take a piece!

Outside the Art Institute, the modernity continued: we went to play around what can only be called the jellybean in Millennium Park. (I suppose the artist might call it something else, but to any eyes besides those of love, i.e., the mother's/ father's, it is clearly a gigantic, reflective, and highly irregular jellybean. Google Millennium Park if you want a sense of what it looks like from a distance!

Looking straight up the belly of the bean!

Self-portrait with spouse in the bean!

Self-portrait with partial spouse in the bean!

Guita takes a breather from the insane romping with her Malinois cousins, Hawk and Reed. She was desperate for some canine company, and Hawk and Reed provided it in spades!