Day 2 - Oh, Canada. Oh, Detroit. Oh, Chicago. Oh, my goodness.

Day 2
Woodstock, ON - Onalaska, WI
Miles Driven: 649
Time in Transit - 16 hours
View From Hotel - Other hotels


"So, Alex," I asked the next morning. "What did you think of Niagara Falls? Beautiful. eh?"
He mumbled something about breakfast and rolled out of bed.

I spent a summer going to school in Canada and there are many things I love and admire about Canada. Poutine jumps to mind, as does beer. I had no idea how well they handled breakfast, however.

On this trip, we were to become experts in hotel breakfasts (note: it is very easy to become an expert - they are all nearly identical).

Figure 1. Typical Free Hotel Breakfast?
Almost. But not quite.

So what tiny, magical element separates the Canadian Free Hotel Breakfast from its sub-standard American counterpart?

Cheez Whiz!

Oh, those wacky Canadians.

This hotel offered, among the many standard options, individual packets of Cheez Whiz, the most disgusting food-like product in the history of mankind.

Mix it into your yogurt!
Spread it on your bagel!
Try to forget that it exists!

Tori opted for a completely Cheez Whiz-free apple. Not Canadian, dude.

As much as we wished to embrace and celebrate the local culture, we couldn't get into Cheez Whiz for breakfast. instead, we opted for an even more iconic Canadian institution.

Tim Horton's Donuts! 87% Cheez Whiz Free!

The hotel staff was enjoying some Tim Horton's, too.

We took our Tim Horton Bag of Sweetness and headed back out on the road. Crossing back into the U.S. was a bit more challenging than crossing into Canada.

There is the border! We're almost there!

So... close...

Traffic into Detroit was a bit more dense than I might have expected. We had a lot of time to savor the lingering flavor of our Tim Horton's donuts.

Q. What will the U.S. border guards say about my shirt?
A. Absolutely nothing.

We wound our way along the southern edge of Lake Michigan enjoying billboards like "Lakes Region Medical Center - Vasectomies - Buy one side, get the other side FREE!"*

* Yes, really.

We also noticed signs in Michigan warning drivers that if they hit and kill a highway road worker, they would face a $7,500 fine. However, when you cross the line into Illinois, the signs warn that if you hit and kill a worker, you could face a $10,000 fine AND up to 10 years in jail.

Michigan needs to step it up a bit if they want their workers to feel valued.

A quick for a gourmet tailgate lunch.

Yay! We're in Indiana. Now we're leaving.

Sorry, Alex. It's not Tuesday.

We continued along our merry way until we reached the outskirts of Chicago. Hoping to erase the memory of last night's Dinner of Horror, we found Giordano's Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Palace of Earthly Delights and stopped in for pizzas that weigh as much per square inch as lead.

Oh the deliciousness.

Yay! Good pizza!

We spent a lot of time photographing our pizzas.

Kerri took too long taking her picture and I ate her piece.

Full of pizza, we staggered back to the van, stored our hundreds of pounds of leftovers in the cooler, and made our way into Wisconsin. As it stands, I have only seen Wisconsin in the dark, but it seems lovely.

Wisconsin by night is quite pretty. But so is just about everything, really.

Day 2 is when we made our first big logistical goof. Our plan all along had been to wing it on this trip. Drive until we're tired and find a hotel. It would have worked fine had it not been for the military exercises going on at a huge military base in Wisconsin.

As the highway droned past us and evening gave way to night, we needed a place to stay. At about 11:30 we pulled off the highway and into a hotel parking lot.

No vacancy.
We tried another hotel.
No vacancy.
Another.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.

We got back on the highway and drove to the next town, about 15 minutes away. Same thing.

No vacancies anywhere.

It took two more exits on the highway before we finally pulled into a Microtel Hotel at 1:30 am and got a room.

I don't remember much about it except that it had beds and I slept very, very well that night. And it was a good thing, too.

Because the next day, we had an appointment with some SPAM and a bloody wood chipper.

Road Trip 2017 - Day 1 - Welcome to Canada, Eh?

Day 1
New Boston, NH - Woodstock, ON
Miles Driven: 532
Time in Transit - 12h 30m
View From Hotel - Tim Horton's Donuts


Our oldest child, Alex, is headed to college in Montana. (Note: Montana is far, far away from New Hampshire.) Naturally, our only choice was to plan a huge cross-country road trip to deliver him to school.

Our daughter, Tori, has had a life-long obsession with California and the west coast. "Can we just zip over to California after we drop him off?" she pleaded. "It's only 17 more hours."*

(*It is technically true that you can drive from Bozeman, MT to the closest point in California in just under 17 hours. It is also technically true that California spreads across several hundred bajilliondy square miles and can take up to 256 years to drive across, depending on the traffic around L.A.)

We thoughtlessly agreed to her request and the 2017 Family Road Trip To Deliver Alex To School and Then To Go To California was officially underway.

Alex was very excited about the trip, as shown in this, a photo of him at the last dinner he had at home before leaving.

No, he's not looking at his phone. He's fast asleep at the dinner table.

Kerri and I rented a minivan to serve as our chariot for this trek. Alex was a bit disappointed that we were not willing to splurge for a Lamborghini so he could arrive at school in style, but they didn't have one with heated seats and Kerri and I were simply not willing to compromise.

Not a Lamborghini.

We packed up the van, including the new mountain bike Alex purchased for school, and we all piled in to begin our grueling family ordeal of traveling in propinquity for 21 days.

Alex is settled in and ready for anything with his fancy biking goggles.

We weren't more than an hour from home when Kerri and I overheard Tori ask, "Alex, why are you smelling your bike?"

"Shut up," he answered.

In a brilliant parenting diversion, Kerri suggested that we name the van. After a long, and occasionally heated, discussion, it was decided that she would be christened "Tawanda"–an exotic name that has the added benefit of sounding slightly like "To wander".

Our first stop along the way was a scenic lookout point on Hogback Mountain in Vermont for lunch. We would get very, very good at eating in the back of the van.

The guardrail along the road was covered with graffiti - some clever, some less so.

An incredible coincidence - some of the graffiti on the fence appears to be a character from my Molly Mac books. Just below it, it says "Montana or Bust 2017". You cannot explain that.

We piled back into the car and headed westward. Our journey was taking us very close to Niagara Falls and a small jaunt into Canada wouldn't add any time to our trip, so we decided to hop the boarder and spend the night with our neighbors to the north.

We drove through the endless wastelands of northern New York and arrived in a town called Amherst for dinner. We threaded our way through traffic along the main street looking for a place to eat. Eating is something of a challenge as Tori is a vegetarian and Alex will not eat anything that even looks like it might contain vegetables.

We finally decided on a small Italian place that had outdoor seating. "It's crowded," we said. "It must be good."

This maxim has officially been proved untrue.

Remember this name. Never. EVER. Eat here.

Sorrentino's was home to Tragically Disappointing Meal Number 1 on this trip. Their menu says that they have a "Special Spaghetti Machine" that makes perfect pasta every time.

Really. It says that.

The pasta may have been perfect, but Alex found the sauce excessive, even by his lax culinary standards.

Manicotti soup, anyone? 

I opted for a pizza, which I always enjoy.

Until now.

Despite their claim, it was not the best. It was, possibly, the worst. How can you ruin pizza?

We slogged through our meal, enjoying the exhaust fumes from passing traffic and listening to the soothing sounds of car horns and screamed obscenities involving rich, evocative character studies of other driver's mothers and their bestial proclivities.

We watched in curious wonder as more and more police cars appeared in the area, diverting traffic and setting up cones, barriers, and detour signs.

They blocked off the street where we had parked Tawanda and a slight unease tugged at my guts. Or, it could have been the crappy pizza trying to escape.

We found out that there was a 5k happening in town and that many of the streets were to be closed.

"We have to get out of here!" I gasped. "Where is the check? We need to pay and get out of here before we get trapped here forever!"

Our waitress eventually wandered over with the bill, I slapped some money down and we sprinted to the van, hopped in Dukes of Hazzard style, and roared up the street 100 feet until we were stopped by a police officer who pointed us toward a thin column of cones set up for us to drive through.

Driving through construction cones would become a familiar theme on the trip.

We blasted back on to the highway and headed for the boarder.

"Niagara Falls, here we come!" I sang.

"I think I have sauce poisoning," Alex moaned.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Tori said.

"Hold it until we get to Canada!" I told her. "And, Alex, please don't die in Canada, there's bound to be a lot of tedious paperwork."

We saw the great plume of mist rising above the American side of Niagara Falls and crossed the bridge into Canada.

Welcome to Canada, eh?

We planned on stopping for a few minutes to admire the majesty of the falls before continuing along our merry way.

It was dark. I was tired. There were no signs, okay?

Okay?

We continued to drive. And drive. And drive.

"We seem to be going a long way," Kerri said. "Aren't the falls waaaayyy back there?"

"Maybe it's the scenic route," I suggested.

"Maybe you missed the falls," Tori suggested.

"Zzzzzzzz," Alex snored.

Somehow, I completely missed the falls. The one bright spot in this goof was that Alex was asleep so we all agreed to tell him that we went to the falls and the he really enjoyed it.

Soon, the memory of the falls faded and we needed to stop for the night. We found a Days Inn and pulled in, looking for a room.

As we walked past the crowd of gentlemen smoking around the lobby entrance, I overheard some of the amazing courtesy and kindness that Canadians are known for. One of the guys laughed loudly and said to his friend, "Oh, yeah, he's a f*&kin' idiot, eh?"

I assume he wasn't talking about me missing the falls.

At the front desk, I was greeted by a cheery young lady who told me that the room would be $89/night. "Unless you saw the sign out front..."

She nodded knowingly.

I stared dumbly.

"The sign?" she said, nodding toward the huge lighted sign in the parking lot.

"Ummm, yeah. I sure did see that sign. Heck of a sign you guys have. Yup. Yessir," I agreed.

"Well, then," she smiled. "Your room will be $69/night."

I smiled and craned my neck to read the sign, hoping I wouldn't see "$20 Discount For F*&kin' Idiots, eh?"

I couldn't actually see the sign through the clouds of smoke from the guys outside, but I decided that I was too tired to care. I could read it in the morning after the smoke cleared.