It's very hard to find dark skies within a reasonable drive of Chicago. There are only a few that I trust, and they're all longer than two hour drives from our condo in Chicago -- but this is one of my favorites, in northwestern Illinois. There was a planetary alignment this night, and typing this I'm just remembering that the fact I was just back from a road trip through Mississippi the day before doesn't seem to have stopped me from going. Jenna and I drove out to watch the sunset and to see Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Uranus in a straight line in the sky (well, Uranus is not visible without lots of glass between you and it, but we knew it was there).
While we were just hanging out in a field, watiting for darkness, I noticed the stars coming out while the vivid colors of the sunset were still visible, silhouetting the wind turbine right next to us against the starry sky, and the rest of the windfarm in the colors of the sunset. You can't really see the planetary alignment here, but you can see Orion just above and to the left of the closest turbine.