Labor Day Weekend Trip

As has become tradition with our family on Labor Day weekend, we headed to New York City and the US Open tennis tournament. This is the fourth consecutive year we have done this because every year we enjoy it so much. Jim's family has done this trip 5 years in a row!

This year we are "spreading the love" as they say. Beverly, Arthur, Lisa (Laurie's sister, more often know as Queenie), and her friend Heather all decided to attend the Open for the first time. Plus, all of Jim's family attended along with Ming and Chris. It's no wonder that the US Open has the highest attendance of any sporting event in the world (over 700,000 this year). The word is out about how great this event is and tennis seems to be gaining in popularity in recent years.

On Friday afternoon, we flew from Chicago to Laguardia after enduring a 1.5-hour delay sitting on the plane waiting to fly out. Ouch.

View of Downtown Chicago looking south

As part of this weekend tradition, we always look for something fun to do in NYC on Saturday. This year we decided to check out the world famous American Museum of Natural History. We had some initial difficulties finding the correct road to get to Manhattan but we made it in reasonable time and survived the driving on these crazy streets. This is not Chicago!

The museum, also well known now for being the setting for the recent box office hit "Night at the Museum", was as impressive as you might expect. The highlights of our visit included the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples, an amazing display of meteorites, and the Hall of Gems (which rivaled and maybe surpassed the Smithsonian exhibit I saw a few years ago). The kids, even though they have been to many museums this summer, somehow managed to be fascinated and enjoyed it too.

Of course, we only scratched the surface of this place. I definitely would like to come back here some day.

Easter Island statue made famous in the movie

After 2+ hours or so, we walked outside to visit Central Park. Colin and Chelsea had never been there before. There was a very good folk singer/guitarist performing for a small crowd and strangely, he stopped singing at one point and started handing out hot dogs to anyone in the crowd who wanted one. The lake (below) was nearby and is currently undergoing restoration. It was quite a nice scene right here in the middle of New York.

Central Park Scene