My Mom, Kathleen Eaton, has spent her life as an artist painting scenes of Chicago and its suburbs. In 2000 she took part in an international competition to design an art installation for the new Midway Airport Terminal. She was chosen along with 6 other artists to implement differing projects for the building.
Her murals were developed to show the essence of a couple of our neighborhoods to travelers visiting the city. I thought that was a brilliant use of her opportunity here, so I decided to follow in her footsteps with this virtual.
Her installation is pre-security. If you are on a layover, budget enough time to get back though security. Midway security is generally pretty quick. My Mom’s paintings have been moved to the escalator area for baggage claim, so you won’t have to wander around much to find them.
Tip: NOTE: DUE TO COVID RESTRICTIONS ON ACCESS TO THE AIRPORT FOR FOLKS WITHOUT A BOARDING PASS, I CAN'T UPDATE THE COORDS CORRECTLY.
Go to the coords, head a little bit south, and look for escalators.
If you are having trouble connecting to satellites inside the building, go up one level to "Arrivals" and step outside. There you can get close-ish to the North coordinate, target a few steps South, and then figure out just how much further East you have to go when you get back inside. At this latitude, every .010" West to East is roughly 43 feet or 13 meters.
Logging requirements:
Take a picture of yourself with one or more of my Mom’s colorful paintings of Chicago Neighborhoods in the background and post it with your log. Per HQ guidelines "a face is not required in the photo” – a thumbs-up, a travel bug, your GPSR, a toy, or pretty much anything unique in the foreground will do to verify that you were there. But seriously, get your smiling face in that shot if you can so I can share that photo with the artist that made them (my Mom).
As with all virtual caches, any logs that don’t meet one of the logging requirements will be deleted. I’d hate to ever have to do that. That’s why I am making this as easy as possible.
Enjoy you trip through Chicago!
I hope that you get a chance to explore it. And if you are just passing through this time, consider staying a little longer on your next trip. It’s pretty great here. I have been a lifelong native of the Chicago area. It’s no secret that this is one of the great cities of the world, with iconic architecture, terrific public art, awe-inspiring public spaces, and a gorgeous lakefront and skyline to which photos cannot do justice. There are so many celebrated stories about Chicago, from the birth and triumph of the modern skyscraper following the tragedy of our great fire in October of 1871 (darn that cow), the first man-made sustained atomic reaction, the massive highs (and lows) of some of the best known sports franchises in the United States, our legendary World’s Fairs, our era as the “hog butcher to the world” and the “city of big shoulders”, the pioneering high energy particle Physics at Fermilab, our amazing Universities, and on and on. We are also known for Al Capone, speakeasies, an “interesting” history of politics, and other stuff I won’t bother getting into because you’ve already heard those stories too. There are existing area geocaches exposing curious travelers to all of those things I listed above… except maybe Mrs. O’Leary’s cow – I haven’t seen that one yet.
Why I chose to place this virtual here:
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.
When I learned that I was given this opportunity to place a Virtual, I was completely floored. My mind raced for weeks with ideas for how best to use this one-time gift to share it with as much of the geocaching community as possible, who’s responses to my caches tasked me with the responsibility to do this right. The whole point of a virtual is to place it somewhere an existing cache type couldn’t go.
An interesting geological feature? That should be an earth cache. A great spot? I could just get super creative to get a muggle-proof container in place or base a puzzle on it.
But an airport that hosts over two million travelers a month? Yeah, that really felt like the best, most impactful thing that I could do with this virtual geocache to give back to the community. That my Mom has iconic paintings here was just lucky icing on the cake.
This Virtual was placed with approval from the manager of Midway, who agreed that this would be a good thing for visitors to the city. I hope that you concur. Happy caching, and happy travels everyone!