As we walked through the Visitor Center, I found a free Bingo Board to play with as we explored the grounds. Shawn had a lot of fun placing the provided stickers on the pictures when he’d find the various objects. When he found the very last item, just before we were leaving, he ran over to show me his completed Bingo Board and asked for a “Surprise Fruit Snack!” How could I resist rewarding all that hard work? (Though, I’m not sure how much of a surprise it was then…)
We sat at the edge of a pond and admired a water fountain, a rainbow in its mist, and very large fish that were inches away from our toes. We dabbled our fingers in another water fountain for a little while before finding our friends, Shrenik, Heena, and Veer. Then we made our way over to the Model Railroad Garden exhibit – the real reason we were there in the first place!
The Chicago Botanic Garden has a temporary exhibit (May – October) that has returned for the past few years called the Model Railroad Garden: Landmarks of America. The website’s description was:
The 7,500-square-foot Model Railroad Garden features 17 garden-scale (G-scale) trains on 1,600 feet of track. The garden-scale trains are 1/29th the size of life-sized trains. Train and garden enthusiasts, young and old, return year after year for the delightful sights and sounds of the miniature trains traversing high and low through tunnels, across bridges, and around buildings — all intricately handcrafted with natural materials, including twigs, bark, leaves, acorns, and pebbles. More than 5,000 tiny trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and flowering plants of close to 300 varieties re-create the topographical landscape of America. Vignettes of tiny people and animals give the exhibit a storybook feel, while sound effects and a working geyser capture visitors’ imaginations.
It also had two very cool videos about it:
It was a lot of fun. The train exhibit was a little smaller than Raj and I expected, but they packed a lot into the space. The attention to detail was amazing. There were landmarks from all over the country represented. (Shawn can now indentify the Statue of Liberty and when we saw the Liberty Bell from Pennsylvania, he pointed out that's where Oma and Opa live!)
(A video might be coming... if I can edit it better!)
By the end of our ‘adventure,’ my pedometer had recorded that we walked for a total of 2 hours 27 minutes 44 seconds, covering 4.247 miles, had taken 8961 steps, and burned 242.5 KCAL. (Unfortunately, it’s a cheap pedometer and it doesn’t always register all of my steps correctly, but it at least gives us an idea of how far we walked.) Here’s a map of the gardens to show just how big a place it is – we did a pretty good job covering most of it, too!
While we were waiting for the trolley to take us back to our car, Raj entertained Veer and Shawn. While they sat in an empty tram that had been parked for the evening, Shawn surprised him by pointing out, “There are two bicycles on the right, Dadda!” Raj was impressed that in fact there were two and in fact they were on the right side of them!
What a great day to spend at the Chicago Botanic Gardens with great friends! The creativity and handiwork behind the Model Railroad Garden alone was well worth the trip, but I'm so glad we saw the other gardens and made a whole day of it. Not many more days left like this in Chicago this year! But, this was had another 80°F day (and 30° swing from the low to the high). I don’t think we saw a cloud the whole day.
Back at the car, Raj drove quickly to grab dinner before Shawn fell asleep. (He didn’t get a nap and had only snacked all day, so I didn’t want him to fall asleep before having an actual meal.) Raj got us to Bucca di Beppo in Wheeling just in time. I was able to hold Shawn’s interest on the way there by giving him a portable fire truck & station toy that he doesn’t get to play with very often.
For dinner, we had cheesy bread Florentine, baked rigatoni with spicy sausage, chicken stuffed with prosciutto, all served family style (and had plenty to take home when we were done). While we ate, we tested Shawn to see if he really did know if right from his left. He correctly identified his left and right hands, ears, eyes, and cheeks. Just to see if he was paying attention, I asked him where his ‘left mouth’ was – he giggled, said, “Nooooooo!” but pointed to his mouth anyway. Not bad for a two year old!
On the way home, he started off a bit wired, sang songs, and made lots of goofy noises, but when I put the toy away and out of sight, he fell asleep almost immediately. I wasn’t able to transfer him to his bed as smoothly as I had hoped, but after just a few moments of very tired and frustrated crying, he settled down, gave me a goodnight kiss, and fell back to sleep. The best part – it was only 8:00 pm!
After spending a gorgeous day outside, it’s an early to bed night for all of us.
Sweet dreams.
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