Portage, Indiana

This past week, Kevin had a training class for work in Portage, Indiana.  Benny and I were lucky enough to get to tag along for the week.  I was very grateful to have done NONE of the following for an entire week: vaccuum, mop, clean sinks, do laundry/fold laundry/put laundry away, dust, clean sinks, clean toilets, grocery shop, cook, load and unload the dishwasher, etc., etc.  All I had to do was take care of Benny and play!  While in this fine suburb of Chicago, I also had my birthday.  It was my last and final birthday in my 20s.  (aka, I turned 29.)  Yikes!  I'm getting old.

Here is a little of what we did for the week:

We went to the Bass Pro Shop.  You can meet this cute little fuzzy friend.

 

 

They had a big fish aquarium.

 

 

Lions, and tigers, and BEARS

 

the moose

 

Toasting by the fireplace.

 

Its true that visiting the Bass Pro Shop is quite a cultural experience.  For those of you that don't know, its a HUGE outdoor type store.  (Think rows and rows and rows of fishing poles.)  I did see that they had camoflauge onesies.  Perhaps a Benny essential item??  My favorite Bass Pro Shop item:  a recipe book titled "Kill It, Gut It, Eat It."  Takin' cookin' to the next level.

 

The Bass Pro Shop was such an amazing store that Kevin took me back the next night for my birthday dinner.  (Why yes, the Bass Pro Shop has a restaurant.)  Kevin is such a romantic, sweet, and thoughtful guy.  Ladies---be jealous.  He's taken.

 

They did have a really big salt water aquarium in the restaurant.

 

I had a delicious happy birthday apple pie and ice cream baked in a cast iron skillet.

 

Aside from the Bass Pro Shop (which of course was the highlight of the trip), we did some other fun stuff.  We went swimming!!!

 

Trying out the kiddy pool.

 

 

The big pool with Daddy!

 

 



Sometimes we just hung out in the hotel room.

 

 

 

During the day while Daddy was working, Benny and I went to a couple of different parks.  Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera, so we don't have pictures.  The first park we went to had a nice paved path that we walked and a playground.  The best park we went to was the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk.  The Riverwalk was a neat path build out over a river.  After we walked this path, we visited the Indiana Dunes National Park.  It had interesting landscape.  Very sandy and tall tough grass.  There was a trail---maybe a little over 1/2 mile long that took us to the Lakefront.  This was very pretty, and we had a perfect day for it.  We walked out on the pier and saw Chicago in the distance about 35 miles out.  Very sad I didn't take the camera with us.

 

All in all, we had a nice trip!