Road Trip Recap Days 7 through 11
Filled up on free breakfast at the Super 8 before heading to meet a friend. Spent a few hours at the Madison Zoo. Great time. And it’s free. Dropped off our friend and drove around for a while. Beautiful city wedged between two lakes. Headed north and hit traffic on a 4 lane highway. Standstill. A trailer with two steers stuck in concrete. Traffic takes on the personality of its state. Double back through farmland and small towns to Wausaukee to stay with Sarah’s uncle and aunt. Deep in the northwoods. We have bratwurst and coleslaw and the kids run and play like crazy after a long car ride. Next day, Dave’s Falls and the Amberg Museum. Back at the house we hang out in the garden full of currants, hops, blackberries, strawberries, squash, etc. The kids eat every strawberry. BBQ chicken, pasta salad, then into town for ice cream.
Next morning head north to the upper peninsula, a portion of Michigan that I didn’t even know existed until way too late in life. My cousin puts us up in her house which is right on Lake Superior. Attempt to swim in the water but it’s glacial cold. Hear her friends playing Blister in the Sun inside as they have a band practice. So far north that the sun doesn’t go down until 10:30. Kids are loving it. Greta and Cormac experience a treadmill for the first time which ends with cuts and bruises.
We wake up to light in the 6am hour. My cousin makes coffee cake with berries and it is delicious. We have local sausage and bacon. We all love it but especially Cormac. Hugs then we head out for Mackinac Island which is pronounced “Mackinaw” but seems to be spelled with a “c” and/or “w” at the end. That plus the ferry fees to get to the island piss us off enough to stay on the Mackinaw City side of Lake Michigan. We swim at the campsite beach and eat pizza. Rain for 3 hours while we sat in the tent watching movies. Cormac and Ruth fight endlessly. Sarah and I try to sleep with little luck.
Eventually we must have fallen asleep because we wake up tired, pack and head towards the Canadian border. Exchange 100 US dollars for 119 C dollars which I later find out was a rip off because the rate is 1.3 right now. First impressions across the border are lackluster but that changes once we hit the country. Beautiful farmland. No traffic. Amish and Mennonites on horse and buggy. Long drive today so we stop for food. Grab ham and bread. Feel the need to experience Canada indigestion so pick up poutine at a place called Porky’s Chips. Good move. Stuff it in my ham sandwich and feel like I’m embracing the culture. Finally reach Algonquin Provincial Park. It’s beautiful. Endless pristine lakes. Moose. Our campsite looks out over a lake. We sleep without the tent cover. I wake up in the middle of the night and the stars shine brighter than I’ve ever seen.
Two nights of camping in different locals leave us ready for our Montreal Airbnb. 5 hours drive goes pretty well. We’re ready to get off the road but are also amazed at how good the kids have been. It’s been 11 days of travel so far and only 2 days with little driving. It could have been so bad but they have been so good. Montreal is really nice. It feels too nice for our family. Everyone is so quiet and polite and we are loud and obnoxious. We eat tacos in a park. We happened to have a friend visiting Montreal at the same time so we meet their family in Jeanne-Mance park. The kids play until 10pm and the park doesn’t look close to shutting down. It doesn’t close until midnight. What happened to all the druggies and criminals? Or the perverts that my dad fears so? Is there no crime here? Or maybe people are so excited by the weather that they just take a pass on it during the summer time.
Ah, last day of the first half of this road trip. We are ready for a break from movement. We have 6.5 hours of driving today through Quebec and central Maine. It’s visually amazing. The pictures won’t do it justice. It’s incredible. The calm entry into the Appalachian Mountains in Canada. The drastic shift to complete wilderness once you enter Maine is wild. They want to run a massive set of power lines from Quebec into Massachusetts right through this area. As we enter the US I think back on a few things that I really enjoyed about Canada. People were friendly. The landscape was beautiful. Poutine. The metric system. Commitment to the French language (which I speak none of — an attempt at Tim Hortons of all places was really pathetic but at least I tried). Canada is a wonderful country. I look forward to more adventures there. But we are back in the US now with family. We will rest for a few weeks before heading back down the east coast at which point I’ll pick this back up.
Thanks to all of our family and friends who have fed us, let us visit and stay in your homes. This trip wouldn’t have meant as much to us without spending time with you.
