LOL - spoken like someone who doesn’t have kids (camping for a month with 3 kids HA HA) and has never been to Chicago in the summer. Puts southern Florida to shame on the heat scale…
Ditto on the wisconsin or Michigan lake house. Are you going to be taking a month off work or will you have to commute?
I take my family to our lakehouse all summer long & it doubles my commute to work, but it is worth it. I’d go with that option if I were you.
My boss took his family up to a cabin in the UP of Michigan a couple of summers ago. Rented a pretty nice place up there on a small lake (and within about 20mi of Lake Superior), and said it was reasonably priced (although his idea of reasonable might be different from mine and yours). Something about it being the off season up there, since most of these rental places cater more towards snowmobiling in the winter.
Shoot me a PM if you want me to ask him for more information.