Snow Dragon Shavery (Navy Pier)
700 E. Grand AvenueThis weekend trip to Chicago we planned on playing tourist. It’s funny how when you grow up somewhere, you don’t always do all the touristy things. It was just a few years ago that I took my first trip to the Willis Tower (aka Sears Tower) despite having grown up just an hour from the City.
We know there are more things and better things to do in Chicago than Navy Pier but neither of us had actually been to Navy Pier in close to 20 years. I thought the kids would enjoy the Centennial Wheel (they did) so I forked over the $80 for us to get three spins around.
Our tickets for the wheel weren’t timed. We could go at any point in the day. We actually had to drive to my parents house near Kankakee to pick the kids up then when we got back to the city, I just went back to the hotel to park since I had already paid for the day.
The walk from the Marriott on the Mag Mile is about a mile. No problem. We do miles all the time on our hikes.
We got to Navy Pier around 2:00. We were after lunch so I was hoping we could find someplace to eat. We checked with Harry Caray’s and Margaritaville (Hey! It’s a tourist trap. Don’t judge me) but they had hour and a half to two hour waits. J put our name in anyway but she was hungry….no, not hungry, hangry. We needed to find something else.
There’s a small food court near the front of the Pier and that’s where we were. J noticed a dessert type shop that didn’t have a super long line so she got in line to get some treats.
Snow Dragon Shavery is a shop on the north side of the City but they also have this food court type shop in Navy Pier. The Shavery specializes in “snow cream” desserts. It’s kind of a mix between ice cream and shaved ice.
Read more…Chicago Brewhouse
33 E. Riverwalk We were not going to be satisficed with just dinner and a couple of drinks when we had the whole night to ourselves in the City without kids.
We kicked off our long weekend in Chicago with dinner at Crushed By Giants Brewing Company but we wanted to do more. Our first idea was just a short walk from our hotel. We really wanted to hit the Sugar Factory at some point on our trip but as we found out, they’re only doing reservations and getting a reservation same day….or even a day out, was not going to happen. We popped in about 9:30 to see if we could get lucky but their last seating was 9:15 so we missed out.
J wanted to walk to the Riverwalk after that. She was in Chicago a few years ago for a conference and they found a great place to relax and have a few drinks along the Chicago River. Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember the name of the place.
The first place was stopped at had stopped seating for the night but they told us to “try next door.” We did just that and found the place J was looking for.
Chicago Brewhouse is on the south side of the Chicago River on the Riverwalk near the Wabash Avenue Bridge. The draw to this place is the outdoor space. They have an indoor area but it’s really small and most of it was closed off to just the servers. The patio space has the Riverwalk running right through it and we lucked out. They had a couple of “tables” for two.
Read more…Crushed By Giants Brewing Company
600 N. Michigan Avenue, 2nd FloorVacation time!
Last year really threw us off. We have been doing zoo trips since the kids were born as our vacations. We’re at a point now that we have been to pretty much every zoo in a five hour radius of Kalamazoo (Saginaw being the one exception for some reason). We were beginning to plan a simple vacation last year doubling back to the Chicago zoos before Coronavirus put an end to that plan.
We started feeling a little better about traveling this year but still had some hesitation. Another thing we started in recent years was my parents taking the kids for a week in the summer. We have to plan pretty far in advance due to childcare commitments needing to be made before school is out.
We picked the week after July 4th. J and I both took an extra day off so we could drive the kids to my parents in Illinois. The plan was for them to keep the kids Monday through Saturday then we’d pick them up and spend a long weekend “vacation” in Chicago.
We found a really great Priceline Express Deal that got us in to the Marriott on the Mag Mile. We wanted the downtown experience and really got the room for a suburban price.
J and I wanted a night to ourselves so we booked the room Friday through Monday. We took off from Kalamazoo after work and headed to Chicago for a night without the kids.
Driving in Chicago has never bothered me. It can be a pain if you end up in the wrong lane but we made it the corner of Rush and Grand fairly easily. I missed the valet lane at the hotel but I knew self park was a block past the hotel. As I attempted to make it to the ramp, I realized the street became one way and I was in the wrong lane. I figured, I’ll just go around the block….which is not something you can easily do in Chicago. 20 minutes later, I looped back around and got in the right lane to get us where we needed to be.
Check-in took a while. There was a rush around 8:00 when we got there. There was a big AAU basketball tournament happening at McCormick Place that weekend and it seemed like every team was just arriving in town.
We finally got to our room about 8:30, got dressed and headed out for dinner.
There were a couple of places close to the hotel we wanted to check out but we figured we had a long weekend and we’d get to them all (spoiler alert, we didn’t…reservations are the norm and you can’t get them 20 minutes before you want to eat) so I picked the one that I figured would be the quickest and easiest on a Friday night.
Crushed By Giants Brewing Company has an address of Michigan Avenue but the entrance is actually on the corner of North Rush Street and East Ohio Street just off Chicago’s Magnificent Mile in Chicago’s Near North Side. The brewery is on the second floor of a building that also hosts an AMC Dine In Theater. If you’re trying to find it from Michigan Avenue, the UnderArmor store is what you’ll see at this address.
On The Roll
Food TruckI am just all about the food trucks lately. It’s hard not to get excited about food trucks on Friday in Kalamazoo. Lunchtime Live is still my favorite part of the week.
I’m not in the office every Friday during lunch time so when I am, I make it a point to at least walk over to Bronson Park just to see who is there and if there is anything I just have to have.
On The Roll is a food truck out of Battle Creek that J and I have been looking for at events for a couple months now. The 100% veteran owned and operated truck specializes in garlic bread rolls filled with specialty pasta…..and barbecue. I was there for the BBQ.
Read more…Eli’s Doces
Food TruckLet’s just keep this food truck thing going, huh?
We had a great kid-free taco truck meal from Juancho’s Traveling Tacos while enjoying drinks from Gull Lake Distilling Company but we also knew there was a Food Truck Rally going on at Fleischer Field in Oshtemo Township.
We didn’t really need any more food food…but we can always go for more dessert.
We pulled in to Fleischer Field about a half hour before the rally was scheduled to end. There were a few food trucks there but we went straight to the churro tent.
Eli’s Doces is a small operation based in Battle Creek but can be found at food truck events in the Kalamazoo area as well. They do one thing…churros.
Read more…Juancho’s Traveling Tacos
Food TruckA few days without kids and what do we do? Go out for drinks and get tacos from a food truck.
We dropped the kids off at my parents on Monday of last week with plans to pick them up on Saturday and take a short extended weekend trip to Chicago. Our original plan was to drop them off on Tuesday so J and I both took the day off. J had something come up Tuesday morning that changed our plans but we kept the day off to just kind of relax.
We got in to the usual “what do you want for dinner?” conversation early. We had some places that we would have liked to have gone to without kids but it seemed none of them were open on Tuesday so we kept looking.
J had been to Gull Lake Distilling Company with some friends a few months ago and really liked the place. They went for a hike, picked up breakfast from a place on Gull Road then met at GLDC for drinks. I had never been so I suggested we do that if they had a food truck that night.
They did have a food truck and it was tacos…so we finally answered that question, “what do you want for dinner tonight?”
Juancho’s Traveling Tacos is a taco cart based out of Kalamazoo. They’re not really a food truck in the way you think of food trucks nowadays. They’re a cart that operates out of a van. At Gull Lake Distilling Company, they pull right up to the outside fence so they’re in the parking lot and you’re inside the amazing outdoor beer garden.
Read more…Gull Lake Distilling Company
92 E. Michigan AvenueFive nights without kids. What are we going to do?
Grandma and Papa like to take the kids for a week each summer. I grew up about an hour south of Chicago and my parents still live there so they don’t get a lot of time with our kids…let alone time without J and I around.
Last summer was a bust due to COVID. We still got together at parks in Berrien County and felt safe enough to do some weekends at our house and at the lake in Three Rivers but those were always short visits. Grandma was bummed but she accepted it and was really looking forward to having them stay with her this year.
Our original plan was to drop the kids off Tuesday. We didn’t want to drive in holiday traffic back to Chicago on Monday. Our plans changed so we asked if we could come a day early. We actually wove our way through the backroads in Indiana after a quick stop at Potato Creek State Park for a quick hike.
Monday night we took a detour in to J’s old neighborhood in Oak Lawn to get pizza from Palermo’s 95th….. the best pizza place in Chicago.
We still had vacation days scheduled for Tuesday and while we both had some things to do, it was a pretty lazy day.
We started talking about dinner. I didn’t have a ton of great ideas and a lot of places we wanted to try were closed.
I did finally come up with one we had been talking about forever but were unsure how family friendly of a place it would be. We didn’t have the kids so it didn’t matter. We could grab some drinks and enjoy not fighting with someone about taking “one more bite.”
Gull Lake Distilling Company is on East Michigan Avenue near the weird six corners intersection near the center of town. The place is a little hard to find if you don’t know where to look. The front facing part of the building is actually Pizza King which has been there for quite a while. The distillery entrance is in the back of the building. You actually go through a fence gate to park where you’re still not quite sure if you’re in the right place at first.
Read more…True North Ice Cream
403 S. Kalamazoo AvenueJ loves to get me out of the house to go hiking and one of the best ways to do that is for us to take a “destination” hike. That allows me to find someplace to eat and, with any luck, find some ice cream treats for the kids.
Our destination for this hike was Coldwater. We met some friends for a sweaty four mile hike along the Sauk River on the Linear Park Trail. We got a pretty tasty lunch at The Willows Bar & Grill then said goodbye to our friends even though we were all heading the same direction back to Kalamazoo.
I had promised the kids ice cream if they were good on the hike and at lunch and, as they have been lately, they were good so ice cream was in our future.
There are options for ice cream in Coldwater but I’ve been hearing about a place in Marshall that makes their own ice cream and has quickly become pretty popular….so we headed back to Marshall.
True North Ice Cream is on South Kalamazoo Avenue near the intersection with Spruce Street. The small red building is hard to miss as you’re heading out of town (or in to I guess). It was an ice cream shop called Side Tracks for quite a while before True North moved in in April of this year.
Read more…Willows Bar & Grill
716 Chicago StreetI have I mentioned we’ve really got in to hiking? Like once or twice maybe? Yeah. We’ve really gotten in to hiking.
Looking at the weather forecast last Friday, the weekend looked like a total washout. The radar showed rain pretty much all day for Kalamazoo.
J woke me up a little after 9:00 AM and asked if I’d be up for a destination hike. Through the fogginess of getting woke up, I said, “Sure, whatever.”
Her plan to get around the rain was to go south. The radar looked pretty clear over Coldwater until about 3:00 giving us plenty of time to hike.
We actually got some friends to tag along and hiked over 4 miles on the Linear Park trail that begins near Jaycee Park and kind of does it loop along the Sauk River up to Rotary Park on the Southwest side of Coldwater.
The hike took close to two hours and destination hikes always include a stop for lunch. We’re still hesitant eat ide a restaurant with the kids who can’t be vaccinated yet so it was up to me to find a spot with a large outdoor patio for the eight of us.
It actually didn’t take me long to find The Willows Bar & Grill sort of near where we were hiking. The red bar looking restaurant sits right on the channel between Cemetary Lake and South Lake on the far western side of Coldwater. The restaurant sits quite a ways off the main road on a road labeled Old Chicago Street.
Read more…Russo’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille (Hopkins)
100 E. Main StreetTraining on new computer systems is always a fun time. I recently had five days of training on a couple of new software systems in Grand Rapids. Some of those days I’d just work my entire shift in Grand Rapids. Some of those days I’d either start or end my shift in Kalamazoo and going to Grand Rapids just for the allotted training time.
Thursday was one of those days I spent the entire day in Grand Rapids. I actually had to go in early. Training started at 9 AM so I had to secure before camp care for the kids, drop them off right at 8:00 when extended care began, then rush to Grand Rapids to make training by 9 AM.
Our Grand Rapids office was short staffed due to the end of the week being more intense and specialized training so once I finished with my session around noon, they kept in Kent County to work with a different colleague.
Our assignment ended up keeping me in Grand Rapids until 7 PM….plus I still had the drive home. J took the kids to a friends house to play after camp so she told me to just grab something on my way home to feed myself for dinner.
Grand Rapids has a lot of options I haven’t tried yet but there are pizza places along the way I haven’t managed to order from in the 11 years I’ve worked for a Grand Rapids company.
I picked the one furthest off the highway since I knew I wasn’t in a hurry.
I put my pizza order in at Russo’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille in Hopkins. At the time, I didn’t know there were three other locations…one of those I actually passed on my way to Hopkins. The pizzeria was recommended to me and since Hopkins isn’t all that far off the highway, I decided to do it.
Russo’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille is on E. Main Street/128th Avenue and Water Street in downtown Hopkins. The restaurant is a pretty large building with white and blue metal siding. Older pictures show the place as a dull brick so I assume that’s still underneath.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 