Tuesday, June 2, 2026, Chicago
We didn’t get up and going until late today. We were lazy and just had a quiet morning. The hotel is great, and is quiet. But I do need to say a word about the showers – I think they are made for Amazons! The pumps for the shampoo are set at about 6 feet (3 inches above my head) and I think the rain shower nozzle and the curtain rod are at a minimum of 7 feet!
The agenda for today was the Field Museum. We started by thinking we’d take the bus, however that was more than half an hour away, and we decided we could walk though Grant Park to get there. We were glad that we did. Grant Park is absolutely stunning. The railway cuts through it in a few places, and there were overpasses to get from one side to the other and trees blocking the view. It’s a huge park – lots of green space, gardens and trees. One of the paths led through a tunnel, and even that was beautiful. It was covered with mosaic scenes. They were lovely.
We learned on the tour yesterday that the city tried to annex Grant Park 4 separate times, but Aaron Montgomery Ward won all 4 legal battles – beginning in 1890 and ending in 1909. He wanted to keep the park ‘Forever Open, Clear, and Free.’ The only exception that was made was for the Art Institute of Chicago which was built in 1892. All development (railways or structures) have had to be placed underground from that time forward.
Interestingly enough, Aaron Montgomery Ward founded the Montgomery Ward stores with George R. Thorne in 1872. One of George’s sons – James Ward Thorne, married Narcissa Niblack Thorne, who was the creator of the Thorne Rooms that I saw yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago!
The extended family seemed to have quite the legacy here in Chicago. Their vision definitely lives on. Pictures of Grant Park below:
There was a lovely, wide pedestrian path that was well marked leading to the Museum Campus area. Everything in Chicago seems to be on a grand scale, and Grant Park is no exception. We ambled our way towards the museum – I can’t do much faster than that right now, but with the brace, my knee seems to be holding up.
Like the Art Institute, the Field Museum is HUGE! The grounds were a mix of manicured parkland and lawn, intermixed with field of ground covering flowers. Large urns on cement pedestals were doted all over the grounds, and there were walk ways meandering past the museum up towards the Shedd Aquarium. Beyond was the Planetarium. Both would be great to visit, but I don’t think we’ll have time this trip. On a side note – the aquarium is supposed to be the largest in the US. On the tour they mentioned that it has a huge collection of salt water fish, and they actually had to bring boxcar loads of saltwater in to house them. Seems funny coming from the Pacific side where saltwater is abundant, but I have to remember that Lake Michigan is freshwater!
I was able to get some great pictures of Lake Michigan and the Navy Pier. The weather was perfect, and the water was a stunning color of blue.
As I’ve mentioned, the Field Museum is absolutely huge. And the building is magnificent. That building alone could be a museum in its own right, without any exhibits in it. As always, I can’t resist beautiful buildings, so I took several pictures. More will follow at the close of this post.
We spent the whole afternoon at the museum. We could have spent days there. The map was easy to follow and the exhibits very well laid out. The main hall was packed with people, but really didn’t feel crowded, it was so vast. One of the exhibits was Maximo, a 122 foot long cast of ‘Patagotitan mayorum’, the largest dinosaur ever discovered. He stands over 2 stories, and we got a kick out of seeing his head looking into the upper gallery.
Our first stop was the Evolving Planet exhibit hall. We wanted to see ‘Sue’, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is one of the biggest draws of the museum. The fossil is the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex ever discovered. It is named for the fossil hunter who found it in 1990 – Sue Hendrickson. The skeleton is 90% complete and it’s incredible. Those giant teeth and those tiny arms! I’ve included pictures below. The exhibit showed Sue Hendrickson next to the unearthed fossil, and how the fossil came to be. It was fascinating.
The evolution exhibit and the hall of dinosaurs was packed with information. Along with skeletons and interactive exhibits and displays, the evolving planet halls featured murals painted in the 1920’s by Charles Knight. The detail in these was really amazing.
We saw many other dinosaurs, and I’ve only included 2 more below. One of a Giant Sloth, and it was incredibly giant! And another of a stegasauraous with the tinest head. Not much from for many brains in that one.
After the evolving planet exhibits, we visited the Life of Plants Hall. This included case after case of plants, their history, where they grew, their flowers and fruit or nuts. As with everything else in this museum, the exhibits were well thought out and presented and easy to understand. I’m not a gardener, and yet I really enjoyed this hall.
We then proceeded to the Hall of Gems. Not only were the gems shown cut and faceted, they were also shown in their stone matrix. How they got from the matrix to the finished jewelry piece just amazes me! One showed the shells that pearls came from, and another of the pieces was a light blue topaz called ‘The Chalmers topaz’. It was 5,895 carats! Pictures below:
Our final stop was to the the Lions of Tsavo. One of my favorite movies has always been ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’ from 1996. The movie starred Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas in a fictionalized account of a true event. The Tsavo man-eaters, a pair of lions, terrorized the workers building a bridge for the Uganda-Mombasa railway in 1898. Although the movie was a dramatization, the actual event was horrific enough. The pair of mane less male lions, unusually large, stalked the construction camps at night, dragging workers from their tents. The workers justifiably fled, shutting down the project. The lions killed roughly 35 people until the chief engineer on the project, Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson, shot them in 1898. You can imagine my surprise when I realized that the taxidermy remains of the actual lions were here at the museum! Of course I had to see them.
While were looking for the exhibit, we first walked right past it commenting that those were unusually ‘big kitties!’ Yes, yes, they were.
We closed out the museum at 5 after visiting the gift shop, then took a bicycle taxi ride back to the hotel. It was lovely to be carried in an open-air seat back through the park and right to our restaurant. Since we both had such a great meal last night, we went back to Kitty O’Shea’s. The rib eye steak with a Smithfield reduction was just as good as last nights. The waitress even remembered our beverages from the night before.
I’m really enjoying Chicago. I probably would never have visited had the cross-country train not ended here, and the fact that the Thorne Room’s were here. I’ll definitely come back here again. The Loop is lovely, and the people are friendly. We’ve still got a couple of more days and we intend to make the most of it.
More of the Field Museum interior:
