LollapaIllustrated

Every few years I get a chance to go on a vacation. I always try to go somewhere I have never been before. This year I chose Chicago, mostly because of Lollapalooza Music Festival. I invited my girlfriend, Nancy, and her brother and my best friend, Ben, to come with me. I am glad they did, we had a lot of fun together.

The last time I went on vacation was to Maui, Hawaii in the summer of '99. I had a relaxing time there, and I wanted the same on this trip. Stress at work has been ever increasing since my last vacation, and mostly what I wanted was a place far away to relax. I certainly found that in Chicago.

We decided to drive, because, despite the gas prices, it's cheaper than flying. Also, I really needed to see some country side. I assure you, we saw plenty of that. We drove by nearly six hours of soybean fields. Missouri and most of Illinois can be boring, unless you really like the sight of soybean field after field after field. We, however, don't.

Chicago is a very interesting town, as most of the northern metropolitan areas are to us down here in the dirty south. They have many things that we don't have. One of the most interesting things is parking underground. We got lost the first day looking for the parking garage, because we didn't see one, it was under the streets, buildings, and parks. Chicago prides itself as being pedestrian friendly, which was a very nice change from trying to play "Frogger" across Johnston St. Another interesting thing they do in the north is to ask you what kind of "pop" you want. We got asked that at Connie's Pizza, we had to explain to our waitress how to go about asking southerners what they want to drink. Procedure is as follows:
"Welcome to our resturant, my name is so and so, what kind of coke can I get you to drink?"
"What kind of cokes do you have?"
"We have Pepsi, Coke, Sprite, Rootbeer, Lemonaid, Icetea..."
"I'll take a Sprite"
We also told her that you can substitute the word "soda" for coke if you happen to be in a more-than-casual environment, or if you are in the company of old folk. We only hear the word "pop" in the movies. The word "pop", to me, sounds like they are trying to give me drugs.

Anyway, the rest of the trip is highlighted below in an illustrated/narrarated sort of way. Enjoy, comment, be happy, and wish you were there.


List of Bands(In order of appearance)
☆Deadboy & the Elephantmen☆Aqualung☆eels☆Jeremy Enigk☆Umphrey's McGee☆The Racounteurs☆Violent Femmes☆Ween☆Built to Spill☆Sonic Youth☆The Dresden Dolls☆The Flaming Lips☆Thievery Corporation☆School of Rock☆Sparta☆The Second City(comedy)☆Manchester Orchestra☆Moses Mayfield☆Matisyahu☆Queens of the Stone Age☆Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Illustrated story (Click on pictures to enlarge)
Chicago is a beautiful town with a recognizable skyline, not to mention the United State's tallest building, the Sears Tower.


So, we made it to Grant Park where Lollapalooza was held, and we were very happy to be there.

Well, at least, I was happy to be there.
There were a lot of other people there, too.

With all those people there we were bound to run into some interesting, "hippy-type" shirts.


The weather was very beautiful, although, it could sometimes get hot.

There are a few things you could do to beat the heat.

1) Take your shirt off.

2) Put a shirt over your head.

3) Go hang out with Squirtboy!

or 4) Go to a shady spot. The shady areas there actually are cooler than sitting in the sun up there. Down here, the shade only keeps you from getting sunburnt.

The shaded areas are nice places to take a nap.


One thing you have to do while you are on vacation is to take pictures while standing in front of things.
So, we stood in front of this very large water fountain in the center of Grant Park.

And we stood in front of this Dairy Queen in a town outside of St. Louis.

Standing in front of things on vacation is romantic

Gas Prices are not romantic.

After our 3 day weekend in the park listening to some of the better bands out right now sitting in the breezy sun and the breezy shade that Chicago is known for, we had to leave for Louisiana. We left for Louisiana at least twenty times cooler, just look!

Somebody slept a lot on the way back.

On the way back we stopped in St. Louis to see the Archway to the West.


After I got home and devoloped these pictures, I decided I thought these looked cool.


Haven't read other Lollapalooza posts?
Day 0 Day 1 Day 2 Update Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 LollapaIllustrated