S24O – by car, in Illinois

We’ve been interested in the concept of the S24O, or sub-24 hour overnight trip, which usually refers to a bike trip where you ride out, stay over, then ride back the next day. This weekend we were invited to dinner with friends in Evanston, so decided to do an S24O without bikes, but with more sightseeing. Here’s a map for orientation purposes:

First, we went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens, where we walked all around, including on the prairie walk. Definitely a winter landscape out there right now, but it was very mild, sunny and pleasant for a walk!

With them temps warming, smallish bodies of water like this are thawing.

There’s an orchid show at the botanic gardens. It was very impressive – and really extensive! Very easy to get orchid overload in there! But the exhibits were done really well and the whole exhibit was very colorful.

We then went to check into our hotel in downtown Evanston, relaxed for a while, then went to our friends for dinner. This morning, we walked over to a really nice restaurant, Cupital, for breakfast. Not sure what caused all the glare in the photo! John had an omelette and I had a sweet potato bowl. Yum!

Then we made a very quick stop at a park by the lake front. The open space was very limited – Evanston clearly did not make a priority of keeping the lakefront “open, clear and free” like neighbors to the south, Chicago and Indiana beach communities did. Sorry, Evanston, minus 1 point for that! However, this ice clinging to the rocks and trees was very cool.

In case anyone disputes my minus one point declaration, seriously, there were fences in places where the lakefront could have been accessible. It’s like the motto was “Fenced, fenced and fenced.”

We then went to a site that is named one of the 7 wonders of the state of Illinois – the Bahai Temple. The ornament on the building is pretty amazing – and readers who are thinking that it reminds them of Louis Sullivan, me too! Some information about the architect Louis Bourgois said that he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Artes in Paris – same as our friend Louis Sullivan who was there briefly. The Bahai temple is made with cast slabs of white concrete mixed with ground quartz to make it sparkle, but materials aside, the intricacy of the ornament reminds me of the Carson Pirie Scott and other Sullivan facades. Oh hey, that’s our friend Ward in that first pic in the link! Hi Ward!

Then a stop to get groceries for the week, and back home. Amazing how just going away to do something different makes the weekend fell longer! And spoiler alert, we have a blog post coming up this week with pics from Miles’s college trip to the Oregon coast this weekend!