New Years Resolutions: CHICAGO!!! Part 1

Trip to Chicago post! (finally)
The trip was awesome! I saw some cool things on my drive there...

Model of Chokia Mounds.

And stopped in Springfield while I waited on my cousin (she's really my dad's cousin so like my second cousin?) to get done with her meetings and work...

Found the Capitol!

Beautiful inside.

Still gorgeous!

President Lincoln's last law office?

There is an old capitol too!

Also beautiful inside

One of my favorite pictures from the trip. Taken through my sunglasses. :)

After spending the night we took off towards Chicago! We went straight to the field museum so I could see the lions from Tsavo. When I was younger we used to watch the movie The Ghost and the Darkness a lot and they always mentioned that the lions were on display in the Field Museum in Chicago. Since then I have always wanted to see these lions. The movie is misleading about what the lions look like. Lions from the Tsavo region actually do not get manes and the movie shows the lions mounted standing up at the end of the movie but in reality those had to have been just other random lions. As you can see, they are not standing.

Man eaters of Tsavo.

It was also interesting that these guys were kinda small. Then, if you read the sign you find out that they were larger in real life. Patterson (the guy who shot them) had them made into rugs and later sold the skins and skulls to the Field Museum for $5,000. When they mounted them they had to shrink them a little so they could get rid of the bad edges and such. The skins were not in the best of shape either... then you realize these lions were shot in 1898. That was over 100 years ago! Then, after putting it all into perspective, they are in GREAT shape!

Other things to see at the museum... (We did not even see half of the museum!)