After 10,000 KM, we are finally home

A Calaway Splash 2007
Originally uploaded by John's Life

Calaway park was a lot of fun and we spent about 5 hours going on the rides. Our favourite ride was the Splash Mountain type ride that looked like this.

From there, we stayed the night at a friends house in Calgary and got treated like kings and queens !! (steak and hamburgers for supper, pancakes & eggs for breakfast).

We had about 13 hour drive ahead of us and we felt it was a bit tight to get to the ferry, so we intended to stop at Hope, BC and bring the girls to see a movie. Well, we stopped in Hope around 7pm, got to the theater in time, but found out that it was only open Fri - Sun !!!

Seeing as how we only had 1.5 hours to go, we decided to gun it for the ferry. The last ferry for the island was leaving for Nanaimo area around 9:30. We got to the ferry at 8:30pm so all was good. At the ferry, we called William and told him we are coming to visit.

Of course, William was working, but luckily Heather was home. We were arriving quite late (midnight), so Heather gave us the secret code to get into their place and we had a room all ready for us.

The next day, William came home and went right to bed, while the kids played (fairly quiet) all morning, until we all went to see Wall-E. After the movie, we went for a bite to eat and back down to Victoria, arriving around 2020 :-)

And that ends Roadtrip 2008, hope you all enjoyed reading the blog. We will try to keep it updated, but probably not as frequently (unless I find a cool application for the iPhone).

Drumheller, Alberta

Well, we made it to Drumheller here faster than we expected and ended up doing the Museum and such yesterday !!

Today, we are going to head down to Calgary and to a theme park called "Calaway Park"

From Thunder Bay to Regina !!

We really didn't expect to be in Regina on the first night, but we tried stopping just inside the Saskatchewan border at Moosomin, but all the hotels were booked !!

We even went to the next couple small cities and they were all booked up....who would have thought?

So we drove 2 more hours to Regina and glad we called ahead as there were 2 room avail in the hotel we called, and they were full by the time we got here (we booked on the road)

Anywayz, we should be in Drumheller, AB today for a good visit of it tomorrow.

Thunder Bay chapter is complete, time to head home

Well, tomorrow we are back on the road.

I think we had just enough time here to do everything we needed. In the 4 days we were here, we were able to go to the Suspension Bridge, Amethyst Mine, Terry Fox monument, Chippewa "zoo", Kakabeka Falls and two BBQ's !!

Here are some pics

We are now in Thunder Bay

Been awhile since we updated this silly blog....

Last weekend we were still in Orillia, we had a couple BBQ's to go to, on Saturday we were at Tito Aster's and hung around for the day and on Sunday we went to Michelle's for the day.

Saturday was mostly for the Tito's and Sunday was for the Cousins. Both were a lot of fun and we were able to relax for the day.

On Monday, Canada's Wonderland for the day....we arrived at 11:30am and were completely busy until 8:30pm. From there, we went up to Eileens for the night.

On Tuesday we went to CN Tower and Ontario Science center. Our original intention was to go back to Eileen's, but I got too excited and wanted to go to Thunder Bay ASAP.

We got to off to a slow start because we programmed the GPS to go to Thunder Bay, not paying attention to it, we realized after 1.5 hours, that the GPS was routing us through the US !!! We would have continued, but we had spent all our American money and there were lots of toll booths that we would have to run :-) So, we turned around and head back to Toronto and headed north.

We arrived in Thunder Bay about 3pm and went straight for the hotel to get cleaned up and quick rest. Our first suprise victim was Mom/Dad's place. We drove out to their place, pulled into the driveway and scared my Dad :-)
Mom was at work, more to that in a second.

Second victim was Shelley. Dad called her to see if she was home or working. She was home, so we boogied out to her place and suprised her. She is always weary of my tricks and didn't seem too suprised, oh well. Mom's suprise made up for it.

We drove from Shelley's to Mom's work and sat in the parking lot, waiting for her to come out. As she walked past, we snuck up behind her in the van. We rolled down the passenger window and cleared our throat to get her attention. She didn't recognize the van at first and thought we were going to complain to here that she was walking on the roadway....but when she turned around....WOW !!! She was so excited to see us. The worst part about us coming in early, she had to work the next day, she almost called in sick, but thought better of it because she had 10 days off after this last shift.

We spent 1/2 the day at Dad's place, cleaning up the van and doing laundry. After that, Dad, Shelley and I went to the "Suspension Bridge"....one word WOW !! We crossed the Ouimet Canyon on a suspension bridge and then took a 200 step staircase to the base of it !!! That was a lot of fun.

The rest of the family went to the Amethyst Mine, what a waste of time that was. There was nothing there, just some static displays from the 70's, a dozen tables of Amethyst rock that you could purchase for $3 per pound and a overpriced gift shop. And they charged you $3.00 just for showing up.
Oh well, you win some (suspension bridge) and you lose some.

Added some photos to Facebook

July 10 / 11th

didn't do too much (except save money) yesterday, just hung out at Restita's cousins house (Maria) for a play date. The kids all get along so well !!

Today we had planned on going to Santa's Village, but I got caught up waiting to buy an iPHONE 2.0.....there wasn't much of a line per se, but the wait times for them to call Rogers to activate were atrocious, but understandable today.

Now we are over at the Youngs' so that I can try and connect to iTunes to activate the phone.

In a bit, we are going to go bowling...so that should be fun !!

Niagara Falls / Marineland

Sorry for the delay in the update to the blog...we are staying at a place without internet. Yes, there still exists a place !! (Tito Tony & Tita Chit's place because it has 2 spare rooms)

We had a very busy day of our official vacation (the other days were just us getting to our vacation).

We started by going to Niagara Falls for a couple hours and then off the Marineland for 4-5 !!

Here is some of our photos from Marineland
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=59269&id=688430324

Roadtrip 2008 - Day 4

Well, we made it !!

We arrived in Ontario about midnight and our hotel room at about 2:30am (local time)....that was a lot of driving, but we were motivated I guess :-)

Today, we are going to the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls and Marineland (Toronto) and then head up to Orillia (Michelle's place I believe).

Here is our map so far

a) Victoria, BC
b) Spokane, Washington
c) Glendive, Montana
d) Eau Claire, Minnesota
e) Niagara Falls, Ontario (arrived @ 2:30am local time)


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Roadtrip 2008 - Day 3

We are getting there...today we only went 1157 km :-( (perhaps my other calculation was incorrect)..oh well, our goal tomorrow is to be back in Canada, Niagara Falls to be exact....it is about 1300km away, so we will see how we do and how well we get motivated once we get near the border...

Here are some photos from today.

1) World's biggest cow (in Salem, North Dakota)

2) Alisha having a snack, Mari in the background using my iPod (w/o permission of course)

3) Alisha posing in front of a wooden cut-out

Roadtrip 2008 - Day 2

It was a long one, but the girls were behaving so what the heck. We went a total of 1222 km today in 13.5 hours!! (yes, we stopped a couple times for an hour and a couple other smaller breaks)

At any rate, we almost made it out of Montana and ended up stopping in Glendive, MT for the night. Looks to be a small town, but who cares, the hotel seems nice (Best Western)
and cheaper than last night ($67 vs $104). Perhaps we should stay in the smaller towns from now on.

Here is our trip so far.


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Roadtrip 2008 - It's going to be great !!

Haha, that is our motto for the trip...what do you think?

Most of our day today seemed to be spent either waiting for a ferry or on a ferry.
First we arrived at the Coho Ferry at 9:15 in anticipation of catching the 10:30am ferry.
When we arrived, we were put in the overflow section, but they said our chances we good. They were good enough that we got on. This is the first time I have taken the Coho Ferry and it "seems" a bit disorganized, especially when they are getting the last few vehicles in. Vehicles are parked at all different angles and when we were unloading, we had to wait for the person behind us to back-up before we could back up to turn around and drive off the ferry. And then as we were unloading, there were still about 5 of us on the boat when they starting loading the next sailing....weird, but it works.


From that Ferry, we drove about an hour or so to another ferry (Kingston - Edmunds), we arrived at 3pm and were told we were going to be on the 3:45pm ferry, by 3:45pm, they mean 4:15, oh well, that was a quick ride (30 min) and we were finally on the road...sorta.


We had to bypass Seattle first, so there were a few turns until we were on the "open road", this was about 5pm. We then drove and drove until we got to our preferrred destination, Spokane Washington and are staying at "Best Western Peppertree Airport Inn"

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