Denver Trip

Last weekend, Lee, Joel, Jenna and I went to Denver for a quick weekend trip with our friends the Johnsons. Here are a couple of scrapbook pages from that trip:

More old stuff

On day 2 of our vacation, we had left Thousand Oaks and were going thru Oxnard and saw this awesome place off the freeway:






So from this point forward, I was totally hooked on finding abandoned businesses.

The beginning of a new hobby

While on vacation in July, somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix we came across these abondoned Motels. I quickly got a shot of the signs thru the van Window because I thought they looked interesting:




Then outside of Phoenix, we saw what appears to be an abandoned Race Track:



Totally fascinating. So then I started keeping my eyes open for more abandoned businesses.

It's kind of hard to tell but this is a circle of very tall palm trees. There were about 3 of these but we were passing so fast I had a hard time getting my camera ready fast enough to get a pic. Not sure what they would have been - maybe a fancy RV park?



Somewhere in eastern California, not too far past the palm trees, I barely caught this abandoned gas station:




So then I decided I was going to try to capture all of the abandoned businesses I could along the way.

Texas Canyon AZ

Well, belowwas my first attempt at uploading a picture from my phone. Too TINY! So I re-uploaded it above and it seems much better!

Texas Canyon - panoramic picture taken with my phone!

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Chicago Day 4 - Part 2

While my mother rested after the morning show and before the evening show, I took the opportunity to meet Adrianne again at the train station and once more, we rode downtown. This time we walked from the train station over the River Walk and then up Michigan Avenue by the water tower and along the Magnificent Mile – ‘One of the Great Avenues of the World.’

On the way to the River Walk. The reddish building is the Encyclopedia Britannica headquarters:

Another view of the river with the Tribune Tower in the center:

How would you like to park in one of these parking spaces?
Kind of funny the way the two signs in the background lined up :)

Tribune Tower: (the most awesome building!)

Interesting bas-relief on the corner of a bridge:

A beautiful live-flower arrangement:


We walked into the entry courtyard of the Wrigley Building – which was strange because from the outside, it looked like you were going to go inside, but once you went through the doors, you were still actually outside.



View from within the courtyard looking West:

Trump Tower:

Then we got into the Magnificent Mile - where all of the expensive stores are: SAKS, Bloomingdales, Cartier. Wow!

It was amazing that this picture even happened because there was so much foot-traffic by here.
In fact, the man who offered to take our picture had actually walked into another picture that Adrianne was taking of me.


The Drake Hotel - Where guests of the Oprah Winfrey stay or used to stay (I think!)

Here is the old water tower and Pump House:




I'm not sure exactly which building these heads are on but they are very interesting and look pretty old!


More beautiful tulips:


I absolutely loved the Chicago Tribune tower:

Not sure what the purpose of these blue trees outside the Fourth Presbyterian Church was!


Inside the courtyard of the church:




This building is really cool and I wish I had gotten some pictures of 'special' stones used in the building from around the world, ie. stones from the Great Wall of China, The Alamo, the Roman Colosseum, Westminster Palace, and The Great Pyramid, among others.


The entry to the Chicago Tribune Tower:

We stepped into the lobby of the Chicago Tribune Tower and I got a few pics.


I love the contrast of the old-style buildings reflected in the ultra-modern Trump Tower:

Chicago Day 4 - Part 1

Day 4 – Opening day of the Independent Miniature Artisans show – in Schaumburg again, but this time we rode on a chartered big yellow school bus to get there! We were on the first bus of the day so everybody was very excited and the noise level was quite high.

It was interesting riding alongside the train that I had been riding on so often in the last 3 days!

Here we were:
Once we got to the show, we had to wait in a long line to get our tickets.

This show was larger than the 3 blind mice show and had even nicer items!




I took a little break from the show to look around the hotel:


This was when I began to realize just how famous my mother is in the miniatures world! She has a website ( www.wannainelpaso.com ) and she also does a lot of posting on different blogs (or groups or something – I'm not sure exactly where she posts) I forgot to mention that we had a hard time just getting to our taxi last night because a lady recognized her name and wanted to introduce her to her friends. Then, we came close to missing the first bus this morning for the same reason!
It hadn't occurred to me earlier to take pictures of these people but it hit me at this show - I should be recording this!
Here are some people who “knew” my mother:



After awhile we decided to go back to our hotel to rest up for the big show that night. The bus was late so I went around and took a couple of pictures (surprise, surprise!)



Here are some more people who knew my mother. They really did know her - not just by reputation - because they had met at a prior show:

Here are people waiting for the very late bus:

I didn't know quite what this thing was but later figured out it must be where they store road construction equipment or maybe snowplows because I saw another one on the highway. I thought it looked interesting.

We took the bus back to our hotel at about 2:30 and my mother went back to our room to take a nap and get ready for the Special Preview Night of the Chicago International Show that night.
I had gotten ahold of Adrianne again to see if she would be interested in going back downtown with me again to walk along the Magnificent Mile while my mother rested.
So we met again somewhere around 3 o'clock at the train station and off we went!