I’m a big fan of Leo Kottke, my wife is a big fan of Janis Ian. We saw Janis in concert with Judy Collins a last month. She was fabulous. Mrs. Pluto wanted to know when Janis would be in the Pacific Northwest again, so I did a little web search and – Leo and Janis are appearing together in November!! Everybody’s happy!
One little wrinkle – the concert is in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
A quick review of airfares indicated it costs about twice as much to get from Seattle to Ft. Wayne as it does to get from Seattle to Chicago. So we were thinking – why not take a quick little getaway vacation in Chicago and drive to Ft. Wayne for the concert?
My question(s) for those of you in the area – is this feasible? How long is the drive? It seemed to be a little under 200 miles – 4 hours roughly? The concert is November 9th – will there be snow? Is there anything to do in Ft. Wayne? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Mrs. P. and I used to live in Illinois and we really enjoy Chicago. But we have essentially no experience in Indiana – She spent a day in Terre Haute once, I spent a week in Gary one day. <snort>
Never been to Fort Wayne, or made that particular drive, but it isn’t going to take you too long. Once you clear the suburbs and traffic (depending on the time of day) it will be fast, smooth sailing. Once you get into the open in Illinois and Indiana things move fast. I’d guess it certainly is feasible. The only catch is, make sure you carefully read the fine print at the Car rental place. Milage and interstate travel can get pricey and shoot any savings you had to hell. That said you might want to consider taking the train. It’ll be cheap and easy. Granted I don’t know what you can expect once you get to Ft. Wayne as far as public transport/cabs.
As far as weather, it will be cool, but snow is very unlikely. In short, I think it would be a good vacation for a long weekend around that time.
Where is the concert? The Embassy Theatre or the Memorial Coliseum? Plan on 4 hours for the drive, if you are going on 30. You would take I80 to I65 to State Route 30 East. Gas prices get cheaper as you go east from Chicago.
Snow is doubtful, but possible. We don’t usually have heavy snow until January or February, but occasionally there are some storms.
Not a lot of things to do in Ft. Wayne unfortunately. The civic theater there is supposed to be pretty good, as is the symphony, but I have no personal experience with either. The usual run of nightclubs and bars. Not a bad city, just not very exciting most of the time.