#27 best destination in the world

Woolly Mammoth Antiques and Oddities

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  • Retail store that showcases taxidermy, anatomy, medical, books, toys, skulls, bones, skeletons, military, funerary, art, charts, maps, tools, specimens, and natural history

Oz Park

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  • Features many statues fashioned after characters in The Wizard of Oz, a book which was authored by Chicago reporter L. Frank Baum

Wicker Park Secret Agent Supply Co

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  • Benefiting a nonprofit creative writing center, this shop sells spy-related gadgets & gifts

Tiffany Dome

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  • Largest Tiffany dome in the world
  • Completed in 1897
  • Exhibits the zodiac signs in pieces of colorful glass

Art Institute of Chicago

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  • Museum founded in 1879 in Chicago
  • One of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States
  • #17 of the top 25 museums in the world
  • Has a permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art

Willis Tower Glass Platform

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  • Four glass boxes that hover over 1,000 feet to give visitors an unparalleled view of Chicago
  • Opened in 2009

Lake Michigan

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  • One of the five Great Lakes of North America
  • Lake Michigan is the largest lake by area in one country
  • The word “Michigan” is believed to come from the Ojibwe word michi-gami meaning “great water”

Blaum Bros. Distilling Co.

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  • Distilling Company founded by the Blaum brothers, and founded in 2013
  • Offers tours of the distillery process and tastings

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

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  • Museum and library that documents the life of the 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, and the course of the American Civil War
  • The museum contains life-size dioramas of Lincoln’s boyhood home, areas of the White House, the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre, and the settings of key events in Lincoln’s life, as well as pictures, artifacts and other memorabilia

Cahokia

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  • Pre-Columbian Native American city dated from 600-1400
  • Includes 120 manmade earthen mounds
  • The settlement began 1,000 years before European contact
  • UNESCO World Heritage Site

Shawnee National Forest

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  • United States National Forest located in the Ozark and Shawnee Hills of Southern Illinois, that consists of approximately 280,000 acres
  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared Shawnee National Forest in 1939
  • Most of the land added to the Forest in its first decade of existence was exhausted farmland
  • Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Civilian Conservation Corps planted pine trees to prevent erosion and help rebuild the soil
  • The Forest is also home to many hardwood trees and other plant and animal species characteristic of the region

Costs

Number of Days: 14 days

Best Time To Fly: June, Sept

Airline tickets: $264

Seattle -> Chicago (round trip) = $264

Food: $45/day x 14 days = $630

Rental Car: $105/day x 7 days = $735

Gas: $72

Entertainment: $109

Airbnb: $171/day x 13 days = $2,223

TOTAL: $4,028