Chicago!

Hello friends of the interwebs! Early Saturday morning, we left for Chicago! We drove all day and part of the night (over 17 hours!!), and finally got to our hotel in Indiana. While riding in the car, I noticed that almost as soon as we reached Ohio, everything got super flat, and there were fields of corn everywhere. It's pretty different from Maine! I also played a game where I wrote down all the different license plates I saw on the other cars. I've gotten over half of the states so far! So anyway, we were in Indiana last night, but today we finally got into Chicago!

As we drove into the city, I was amazed at all the buildings. 

After we parked the car, we walked over to the zoo. Here I am on the walk there with the Water Tower Place and a couple other tall buildings behind me.

The path went along Lake Michigan. It looked EXACTLY like a beach! Even though Lake Michigan is a lake, you can't see the other side, and there are big waves. There are also sandy shores and bright blue water. It's so beautiful! 

As we got closer to the zoo, I saw some Canadian Geese!

Finally, we arrived at the zoo!

The first animals I saw were the zebras.

Here I am in front of the zebras.

We saw some gazelles next to the zebras, and then we went into the reptile and small mammal house.

There were lots of kinds of frogs and snakes and lizards, as well as naked mole rats and a tiny slow loris. But my favorite was probably the fennec fox. 

It was lazing around in the sun. Look how super adorable it is!!

The Patagonian cavy was also super duper cute. They looked like giant rabbits!

We walked around and saw some other animals, but then we came to the lion house. There were other big cats there, including my favorite, tigers!

Here's the tiger relaxing atop its rock.

After that we went into the bird house.

These little birds were so funny; it looked like they didn't have necks!

After the bird house we saw the bears. Here's a sun bear walking around in its habitat.

The poor polar bear looked so hot! I was surprised it wasn't swimming, though; the water looked nice and chilly!

We saw the rhinos right before we left. 

Here's the view of the city from where I was standing on a bridge on the path back.

Our next stop was American Girl Place!!!

I checked out the book section first. The whole store was like the catalog, only laid out over two ginormous floors! It was wicked awesome!

For the longest time, I have been eyeing the sporty sandals. Since I got some money for my birthday, I decided to get them, as well as a souvenir tee and sweatshirt!

After the American Girl store, we went back to our hotel. I had such a great time at the zoo and AG place! I'm also pretty tired after all that walking and shopping. Tomorrow, we're going to go to the Lego Discovery Land, and after that we're going to head to Wisconsin. I'm so excited!

This has been Dani, dabbling in exploring Chicago. Over and out!