Traveling with a 1 Year Old - Chicago,IL

Have you been to the dunes in MI? I would suggest Van Buren State Park - they have dunes, a play area and lots of rocks along the beach to check out. South Haven has a nice sandy beach, no dunes, but nice beach. So does St Joseph Silver Beach -that's a nice one for kids. Grand Rapids has a nice childrens museum and John Ball Zoo which is nice. You could just drive up the coast and check out mulitiple beach spots and then end with a few days in Grand Rapids???

House on the Rock is really cool for that age (WI)
City Museum in St. Louis will become a family favorite in no time, we first went with our kids when they were just turning 4 and 9 months old, both had a great time. There are lots of other St. Louis things too, a zoo, the magic house, the arch.
Starved Rock. We used a back pack carrier for all of these places, it is just the easiest way to do anything safely with that age.

I live in Springfield, and we have the Lincoln sites - Presidential Musuem (very nice), Lincoln's home, Lincoln's Tomb, New Salem (about 45 minutes north of Springfield). New Salem is the town where Lincoln lived prior to moving to Springfield. It looks so much like Little House on the Prairie. Dirt roads and lots of room for a 1 year old to roam free. The zoo here is nothing to write home about.

Peoria (about an hour north of Springfield) has a wonderful zoo. I have never been to Brookfield or Lincoln Park, but it is about half the size of the St. Louis Zoo.

St. Louis is about 6 hours south of Chicago. Much smaller, but many free attractions - the zoo, Grant's Farm. They have many other attractions, but I haven't really looked into that lately.

Lake Geneva
Wisconsin Dells
Camping.- many places
Starved rock.