Road to Loudwire Music Festival, Day Seven: The Windy City

The inaugural edition of Loudwire Music Festival is set for June 26-28, 2015, at Grand Junction, Colorado. Ahead of the fest, we’re hitting the road in a 2016 Kia Sorento, traveling the states and finding new adventures as we make our way from New York City to Grand Junction. Where will we go? What will we see? Who will we run into? Follow along right here at Loudwire to find out, and make sure to keep an eye on #RoadToLoudwire on Twitter and Instagram.

Saturday (June 20) was packed full of action all over Detroit. The evening found Steve and I playing old-school video games courtesy of Offworld Arcade, eating crazy delicious food at Wright and Co. and listening to some classic funk and soul in a basement on Bagley Avenue.

As much fun as we had in Detroit, we knew we had to wake up early this morning to hit the road to Chicago. We re-packed our bags (again), filled up the Sorento and headed toward the Windy City. Thankfully, our Sorento is loaded with an unflappable GPS system, and even when we hit massive detours -- which we unfortunately did -- it always leads us to our destination. Without it, I think we'd still be driving around the streets of New York City trying to find our way out!

Thanks to some random road construction, we arrived to Chicago later than expected, and even though we were snacking on some beef jerky, we were starving -- so we decided to make our first stop in town the legendary Lou Malnati's Pizza. Just look at this deep-dish delight:

From Lou Malnati's, we hit up a couple of record shops: Shuga Records on N. Milwaukee and Reckless Records on E. Madison. Both were stocked with tons of new and used vinyl, and as you might expect if you've been following along with our Road to Loudwire adventures, we left a few dollars poorer and a couple of records richer.

With full bellies and our new discs in hand, we decided to do something we haven't done much on this road trip: be tourists. We walked all over Millennium Park and next to the Chicago River -- there were a lot of people out and about, all enjoying the city's gorgeous views and beautiful weather.

Tomorrow, June 22, we're planning to wake up early and get to Kansas City as soon as we can -- though, it won't be that soon as it's about an eight hour drive! Fortunately, the Sorento can last a little more than 350 miles, so we don't have to spend much time at the gas pump.

Between the gas mileage and GPS -- just to name two of the seemingly endless list of features this car is stacked with -- the Road to Loudwire has been a breeze, and we can't wait to see what the highway has in store for us this week!