To Chicago and points beyond with Patty

Back when I had less direction in my life, but still had the thrift shopping addiction, I went on a thrifting adventure to Chicago. Patty was my first real thrift shopping pal. We would plan our Saturdays around shopping one section of town (Orlando) and hitting 4-6 stores in a day. My wife and I do the same thing with many of the same stores here now.
Patty and I decided to go on a journey north to The Windy City in seach of that oh so familiar smell of a great thrift store. You know, the first time you walk in some stores you can tell that they are gonna be a goldmine just because of the aroma. Odd but true.
We loaded my brand new 1990 Mazda 323 with a few dozen cd's, a couple changes of clothes and looked at a map. (If the Internet would have been around, as well as the directory I'll be finishing up in the next few weeks, we never would have made it back alive. Imagine the thrift safari's you can plan with this directory!)
We and I went North to Atlanta first. She was bringing dozens of sample items of clothing that she had bought and altered from thrift shops in hopes of selling them to hipster clothing places in Atlanta, Chicago and Madison Wisconsin.
In Atlanta we did some good shopping at a killer Value Village, it's HUGE,as well as hitting many others. Atlanta's a really good town for the thrifter.
Anyhow, from there we drove north up to Chicago. Patty's grandmother and aunt lived in St. Charles, a suburb of Chicago, and we were going to stay with her grandmother. We did insane thriftng in many of the suburban Chicago store as well as in the city itself. After a few days we went up the the Wisconsin Dells and hiked in some really beautiful country. Another aunt of Patty's lived outside Madison which was our next destination.
Madison Wisconsin has 6 colleges and we got there in the midle of the summer. The thrifting was amazing, we nearly spent the rest our money the only day we were there. We did however see Lenny Kravitz walking down the street. Super leather "I Am A Rock God' Pants on and back then he had those mega dredlocks going. He was very cordial and gave Patty an autograph.
We had a really nice time except for the fact that I was broke for weeks after. I'll plan my next trip better next time.