Loop de do
I go to the Loop almost everyday for some of my classes. I ride the train over, I get off, go to class, sometimes eat lunch, and then take the train home. I realized that there is so much more to the Loop than just my classes on the DePaul campus. So I decided to take a walk through the Loop to discover some new places. This began Wednesday afternoon after lunch, since I only have one class on Wednesdays, and I started in front of the DePaul campus bookstore. I just started walking trying to think of places I visited on vacation once as a way to get my bearings. I tried to stay sort of close to the train tracks thinking that they might lead me somewhere interesting since my logic is that things built closer to the stations and tracks attract more people due to convenience so therefore those places would be more interesting. I walked along for quite a while finding nothing really interesting except for some fast food restaurants and a Spirit Halloween. However while the places were not interesting, the sounds were. Some crosswalks go under the tracks completely so everything echoes like a tunnel underneath. My favorite part was hearing the trains rush past above the chaos of the crosswalks and the cars. They were so loud, similar to the experience I had the Fullerton station, where they blocked out the sounds of the people and the cars rushing past.
After exhausting the walk of following the red line tracks, I decided to walk closer towards the lake. Along the way I found an ice cream shop so I of course had to stop and get myself a snack for the long road ahead of me. The ice cream was really good and fueled me up for the grueling journey ahead of me. (It was not really that bad of a walk, I was just trying to be funny and failing as usual.) As I was eating my delicious ice cream I noticed a bunch of people trying to cross the street and so I decided to follow them to find out where they were all going. It turns out that there was this huge fountain that was very detailed and close to the lake. I found a plaque on the fountain that told me it was the Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain. When I got back home from my walk I decided to look up the fountain on the Encyclopedia of Chicago and I learned that it was built in nineteen twenty-seven which was two years before the layout of Grant Park was finished. I also overheard a tour guide talking to a group about how the man who built this fountain dedicated it to his wife and it takes so much water to run that they only run the fountain two times a day. It was a really beautiful and intricate fountain with the magnificent view of Lake Michigan behind it. After stopping to take in the view for a while I continued into the park and followed the paths passing by a beautiful flower maze with tall wire arches leading the way out. Positioned at one of the arches was this girl in a beautiful dress, with some people around her taking pictures. I did not want to interrupt the photographers but I was guessing it was for the girl’s Quinscenera or perhaps another important event in her life. I kept on walking observing the many families at the park until I ended up back on the street.
I decided to cross both ways and on the other side there was a set of stairs. I went up the mysterious set of stairs which led me to yet another park. This one was having a festival or a concert because there were so many white tents and there was a band on the stage of an amphitheater who were warming up. I kept walking down a path that had a bunch of other people following it as well. The path was lined with colorful flowers and large trees that loomed over the path. The path was long and winding and since the trees were so tall I could not see where I was going at all so I had to blindly follow the crowd of people to my unknown destination. Finally there was an opening and to my surprise it led me to The Bean, also more formally known as The Cloud Gate.
The shiny metal sculpture was surrounded by masses of people who had their phones out taking pictures. However there were two individuals with a speaker, a set of microphones, and a large flag protesting. They were shouting “Black Lives Matter” and blasting somber music as they both circled around The Cloud Gate waving the flag back and forth. No one seemed to pay them any mind or try to stop them from protesting. I began to walk away only to see several police officers briskly walking back to where I had come from, making me a little bit worried and sad for the two protesters that they were undoubtedly after. I walked out of Millenium Park and found myself back on the street. I decided to walk back towards a train station that seemed familiar to me, making sure to take a different way back than the way I had gotten myself here. Funnily enough I had found my way back into Grant Park but in a completely different section than the one I had been in before with the flower garden. This one had a small seating area and a food truck with some outhouses. I sat down on a bench, out of the way of the seating area for the food truck, and watched the people pass by from where I sat. This felt like the perfect end to my walk, just relaxing in the cool breeze and taking in the scenery. At this point I pulled out my phone and opened up the map app to take me back to the DePaul Loop campus bookstore where I could take the red line back home to Fullerton.
