How Can it Be So Hard to Find a Plane at O'Hare?

I often have to drag Little Man on errands with me while his sisters are in school (or in this case camp). Usually he's a good sport about it, so when I can I try to do something that he will enjoy too.

Today we went to the car wash (which he enjoys) and then the Target near O'Hare. The store is right under one of the landing flight paths, so you can see planes making their final approach when you stand in the parking lot. Once we were done with our shopping I asked him if he wanted to go to the airport and watch the planes, take off and land.   Didn't have to ask him twice.  He loved that idea.

While we always see planes crossing the highway I wanted to find a place where we could sit for a while.  We drove around the perimeter of the airport and never found a good spot.  The area where planes were taking off from was far removed from the road and behind small hills of construction.

Following my GPS I drove down all the little access roads and we finally found this - the destruction of an old United Cargo terminal.  Lots of excavators, big jackhammers, etc.  He loved it.  We sat there for a good 10 minutes just looking out the window.

Still, I was determined to find planes taking off.  We drove further around the airport until we had made a complete circle.  In about 30 minutes, we only saw 1 plane taking off anywhere near where we were.  Oh well, he still enjoyed it.  We did manage to get a closer look of the old planes the fire department practices extinguishing plane fires.  We saw a big fire at O'Hare when driving down I-90 a few weeks ago, made me nervous but after finding nothing n the local news, I figured out it was just a drill.

All in all we had a decent little adventure even if we never found our goal.