All my mapquest trips I had printed up: from Days Inn to the Renaissance Hotel in Schaumburg; from Days Inn to the House of Worship/Baha'i Temple in Wilmette; and from either location to O'Hare Airport, included too many turns and expressway voyages, which I had no intention of taking. I considered this a vacation.
September 2nd we moved to the newer, much better Days Inn on W. Devon, having gotten excellent directions from them, and checked in. I got a map at the local gas station, but no hand lotion [mistaken assumption the motel would have lotion.] We discovered there was a mall off of Meacham on route to the Schaumburg hotel with a Ruby Tuesday, which we eventually found. At Ruby Tuesday we got very good directions to the Baha'i Temple in Wilmette: follow Euclid, which becomes East Lake, which fetches up on Sheridan, the street which cruises along the lake shore where the Temple resides in all its glory.
Towards the end of my stay I realized why distances were so long on this map. The scale is one inch to two miles. On my Tacoma map the scale is probably one inch to a half a mile. Anyway, with distances so out of proportion, it led many times to a lot of confusion in my mind, thinking we must have passed a particular turn. Driving from Schaumburg to Wilmette along this surface street late in the afternoon took about a rather tedious hour.
At last we reached Sheridan, turned right, passed some smaller streets, crossed a small bridge and then, whoa! There it was, this breathtaking, beautiful, enormous white lacy dome. One is never prepared to see it. Here we are driving through a beautiful residential neighborhood, and then here is the Mother Temple of the West. My real reason for coming to the Chicago area.
Just as at the World Center, where we saw the Shrine of the Bab and the terraces, a jewel-like and holy setting, set in the midst of an urban center in Haifa, I wondered about the people living there mundane lives with this gem in their midst, so replete with meaning for the Baha'is. Do they notice?
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