Chicago

I hadn't showered in.....3 days?

Made in MA for 1893 Chicago World's Fair. About women's rights. Yeah!

We went through Chicago on Friday (May 31). It was a very short visit (we had both been there before, and we were excited to get on to Madison to see Tim’s sister). Our only goal was to find the best deep dish pizza in Chicago and eat some lunch. We also had a couple of hours to kill before Tim's sister got out of work, so we decided to walk around the Navy Pier. For people who have never been there, it reminds me a little bit of Faneuil Hall in Boston, but newer and a smidge more touristy. It was a lot of fun. We saw the stained glass museum (so cool!), a lot of boats, and a very interesting garden inside of a glass building (the Crystal Gardens). The stained glass museum had really interesting pieces from medieval times to present day. It occurred to me that Chicago is known for its architecture, so it would make sense that they would really appreciate stained glass and its use as art. 

We still hadn’t had lunch, so when we left, we were on our way to Lou Malnati’s, a Chicago pizza joint (many locations, we were going to the one outside the city). It was only 2 o’clock by this time, so we were surprised to see that traffic was piling up going into the city. Now, if any of you have ever driven in Chicago, please tell me what you thought of it, because Tim and I got lost and quite frustrated. We got outside the city (probably 20-30 minutes) and then turned around inadvertently and drove ALL THE WAY back into the city—in awful traffic—for two hours (although, I fell asleep for part of this…oops!). Needless to say, we got to Madison later than we were hoping; and we saw some more of the city…without really wanting to. BUT, we STILL did not use the GPS to get us out of our jam! Maps all the way; Tim called me the map boss and said that he should listen to me more because then we wouldn’t get lost so much. :-)

I especially love the socks.

Pizza was delicious and totally worth the long wait. We had so much leftovers that we brought it to Wisconsin and had it for breakfast for the next three days.

Love, Bonnie 

Border crossing at Detroit (May 30)

We drove from King Waldorf’s to Buchanan, Michigan on my birthday, May 30 (you may have already read about the cafuffle with the campground in Buchanan). The highlights of the day were definitely crossing into Detroit from Windsor, Ontario and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan (right outside of Detroit). I’ll let Tim tell you about the museum as it is definitely his domain. I’ll just say that the museum did NOT do a good job at catering to women. Dad, I highly recommend that you visit it (not because of the woman thing) because they have really cool exhibits on cars, airplanes AND agriculture (there may or may not be a picture of me driving a huge tractor floating around). 

Now, onto the border crossing. Tim and I crossed into and out of Canada a few times prior to Detroit and every time Tim was driving. I was inordinately nervous and anxious about it each time. I think its because I like to make a friendly connection with people that I meet and also Tim was acting a little nervous (which is unusual, so that made me MORE nervous). I can tell you, the folks at the border crossing (both U.S. and Canadian) are most definitely NOT friendly or interested in making friends. So, I decided that maybe I should try driving across the border, thinking it would make me less nervous if I were the one actually answering questions. Tim warned me that the Detroit border crossing was not as laid back as the ones in the Thousand Islands…trust me, they did not feel laid back to me. I felt like I could do it, though and I like challenging myself to do scary things, so we set off.

Our view from the car before crossing into USA.

 

So, we drive through the tunnel into Detroit, get to the crossing, wait patiently for a few minutes for our turn. My breathing starts getting shallower and shallower, I’m starting to sweat, and then we pull up to the gate. The guy asks, “how are you folks doing?”…and I didn’t know what to say! It was the first time that someone was so pleasant and cordial to us when it came to border crossing. So, I finally gathered myself and answered his question and all the other typical questions (where are you traveling from, where are you going to, what do you do for work, etc, etc) and he let us go through! It was, by far, the easiest crossing we had had. Tim and I looked at each other, breathed a big sigh of relief and said, “that was nothing!” 

I pull out slowly and around the corner and notice two other border control officers standing in the road, walking towards my car.  They wanted to talk to me! Immediately, I started sweating again and hyperventilating as I rolled down my window for these two guys. One starts talking to me while the other starts looking in and around the backseat (there’s A LOT of stuff) and I start wondering if they’re going to search the car…which would take a VERY long time with all the camping stuff. The guy asks, “are you carrying narcotics?” and “where have you been, how long were you there,” and all sorts of other questions. Finally, he looks at his partner, shrugs and waves us on. We drive off, get to a stop light, I ask Tim where he thinks we should go, and he says, “I don’t care, just get us away from here.” 

I couldn’t believe it. The one time that I drive through the border crossing, we get a secondary interrogation from scary U.S. border security officers. Maybe it’s just bad luck…or maybe I’m bad luck. They probably could tell that I was very nervous and possibly suspicious. I should have told them that I brought a ball of yarn back into the country…I feel like such a rebel. I’ll probably do another border crossing at some point; I’m a glutton for punishment. 

Finally, my recommendation on visiting Detroit: don’t. It’s really sad to drive through because so much of the city has been decimated by the recession and loss of automotive economy.In fact, all of Michigan had this feel of disrepair to it that was disappointing and unfortunate. 

Soon enough you'll hear about our brief, inadvertent tour of Chicago (complete with deep dish pizza!) and our adventures in Madison, Wisconsin where we've spent the last few days with Tim's sister. 

Love, Bonnie

Toronto and Niagara Falls (May 29)

I’ll only briefly talk about Toronto because Tim did such a good job covering it.  It was a very short visit. I had told Tim since the very beginning of planning our trip that if we went through Toronto, we had to visit this yarn shop. One of the few blogs that I read is written by a knitter who lives in Toronto and frequents the shop, so it gets a lot of press there. It was lovely, located in the same neighborhood (called Kensington Market) as Tim’s video game store and a lot of other funky shops and eateries. It was a short visit, but definitely somewhere that I’d like to visit again if I’m ever in the area (I have a feeling I’m going to be saying that about a lot of the places we go).

My Toronto souvenir. I will call them my Toronto socks.

I did not expect to like Niagara Falls. I thought it was going to be over the top, cheesy, and just unclassy. I thought it was going to be dated and not exciting because it’s SO touristy. I won’t even mention what I thought of our campground (I’ll just say that it was fine…just a downer after Kring Point). I was pleasantly surprised when I liked the Falls so much. It was a beautiful day, probably 70-75 degrees (what’s that in Celsius?), blue skies with a light breeze and there was just enough of a crowd to feel like it was busy but not so overcrowded that we felt claustrophobic. 

Picture of the falls and a random dude. Have I mentioned that I am an awesome photographer?

In addition, I have this sick obsession with all things Canadian; so I found the cheesiness to be just right and unjustly preferred the Canadian side to the U.S. side. It was especially awesome when the Snowbirds performed for us (yes, specifically for me and Tim). It was something that made the typical Niagara Falls experience not so typical and humdrum. I'd show you a picture that I took, but the planes were too fast for me. Check Tim's photo/video out.  

Love, Bonnie

Thousand Islands (May 28)

Sorry for the delay in posting about what's been going on. We've been busy and internet is not ubiquitous, as previously believed. 

Thousand Islands: So, last Tuesday (May 28), we went into downtown Alexandria Bay to explore the Thousand Islands and the little town that has grown out of the tourist trade. The town itself seemed rundown and deserted. There were very few people waiting for the boat tour, and the people that we did see looked… shall we say, in their golden years. 

Look how deserted this place is; all I could find was this attractive man posing for the camera.

Unfortunately, it felt like the town was past its prime as a tourist destination. Tim assures me that its busier during the height of the season, but that we should expect it to be like that on a Tuesday morning before the season really gets going. In all honesty, I felt a little irresponsible being there because there was obviously something that I wasn’t doing (like working…or studying…or…) because everyone else my age was so clearly not there.   

We took a 2 and ¼ hour boat tour around the thousand islands. Tim took thousands of pictures and we enjoyed ourselves. There are a lot of big, old summer mansions built on these tiny little dots of land in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Personally, I loved the little tiny houses that were clearly the pride of the people that lived there all year round. The major attraction for tourists is the Boldt Castle, and there is an interesting story surrounding it. George Boldt started out as a busboy at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel during the turn of the century and eventually worked his way up to being owner of the hotel. 

My future house (acutally the shack that George Boldt built for his mother-in-law) and me, looking confused. Obviously

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It was at that time, during the early 1900’s that he decided to build this castle, inspired by the European castles that he so much adored, for his wife. She suddenly died of tuberculosis many years later, as the castle neared completion and Boldt stopped construction on the castle because he was so heartbroken. Tim and I decided to not go tour the castle because it was ridiculously overpriced and the shuttle back to the mainland was going to cost us even more money when we had already paid for the trip to the castle. Overall, I would recommend visiting the Thousand Islands; it’s cute, not too big, and is an interesting meeting of nature and technology. I would definitely check out Kring Point State Park as a place to stay; it's a beautiful campground with lots of amenities. 

Love, Bonnie

Kilometers since last post:  554
Total kilometers:           1498
 
Wednesday was probably the busiest day so far. We got an early start, and packed up camp quickly. It was a long drive into Toronto where we stopped to visit a yarn store:

Found a cool independent video game store, right next to the store that wins the Best Slogan of All Time award:

We wanted to go up the CN Tower so we could compare it to the Space Needle, but it was overcast, and we still had a lot of driving to do, so we just took pictures.

It was interesting to listen to local coverage of the unfolding scandal involving Toronto's mayor as we drove through.

Our day was far from over though, we drove on to our campsite at King Waldorf's Tent & Trailer Park in Niagara Falls:

We headed over to the Falls themselves:

Took the behind the falls tour:

and just as we were getting ready to go, a PA system announced that in 20 minutes The Snowbirds would be performing over the falls.

The performance was right over our heads:

 

 By the end of the day, it was hard to believe how far we had traveled, and how much we had done in just one day.

And We're Back

Miles since last post:  96
Total miles:           587

We apologize for the delay in updating, we have been very busy, and internet access has been scarce. I do want to do a post with mileages for each day missed, so the above mileage is for Tuesday may 28th, not today. We had a great time touring The Thousand Islands. we did a boat tour covering both the U.S. and Canada. It is really a surreal place with mansions:

Boldt Castle

The blue just to the left of the house is a very loud peacock

and shacks

perched on rocks sticking up out of the St. Lawrence River, the same St. Lawrence that carries shipping from the great lakes to the ocean:

We also took some time to venture into Canada to drive the Thousand Islands Scenic Parkway, a former divided highway that was converted to a parkway after a new highway was built to the north.