Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is our first full day in New York, time for some rest. We spent the day at the house hanging out and I was basically not on line all day. Things are slow given the holiday week so I was able to avoid the office for the most part.

We started the day in Michigan with a view of Ontario, Canada across the river. We got up and checked out of the hotel. The girls thought that the hotel was a lot of fun because it had big open banquet spaces that were not in use and they were able to run around them like little maniacs and blow off some steam that collects when kids ride in the car for days. They enjoyed the views and the space. And I enjoyed getting my Hilton Honors points, of course.

We got on the road right away and crossed into Canada, this is, I believe, only the second time that the girls have been to Canada. We really do not go very often.

We made good time across the Ontario Peninsula. In fact, we decided to wait until we were in London before we bothered to stop at a Tim Horton’s to get coffee and breakfast. We love getting authentic Canadian Tim Horton’s rather than the imitation American stuff. Everyone loved the food and the adults all enjoyed their delicious Canadian coffee. The girls really liked the food. Liesl, our soup lover, really liked their soup there.

The weather was great for a warm, bright drive through Canada. We made good time and got to Niagara Falls while the day was still young. Paul really wanted to do some stuff there as he has never been before. But it was packed with tourists and was going to be very expensive and time consuming to do anything, so after driving around for a while trying to come up with things to do we eventually gave up on all of it.

By late afternoon we got to dad’s house and we visited and did dinner. That was around five that we ate.

I took some time to set up my laptop and get to work to catch up on everything since I had been in the car so much, obviously there was a lot for me to be doing. This was around six thirty.

Tomorrow I am going to be out of the office all day as Paul and I are heading down to Big Flats to work for the entire day. No rest for us. So I needed to get to bed early so that I could get some sleep. It’s been an exhausting week and tomorrow is going to be long.

This morning we hung out with Paul’s dad and one of his friends for a while, and talked shop for a while. Then it was time to get on the road.

We drove all of the way across Wisconsin today to head to the Upper Peninsula. This is all new territory for me. It’s neat to see so much more of the country.

It was a super long day. It was already super late when we crossed down into the Lower Peninsula and headed past places I’ve not seen since I was in college, like Frankenmuth.

It was so late that we gave up on making it to New York tonight. We ended up getting a hotel right before the bridge to the Canada on the US side from Sarnia.

At least tomorrow will be a really easy drive.

Today is our one full day in Wisconsin. Tomorrow we have to head out to New York, and that is a very long drive.

For a late breakfast, or an early lunch, we went to Norske Nook, which is kind of a big thing locally. All authentic Norwegian food. It was a little expensive but the food was really good, I tried some traditional Norwegian that I really enjoyed.

While at “the Nook”, we had some amazing desserts and decided that dad needed one, too. So we picked up an entire pie for him to take back to New York with us tomorrow.

We ran some errands this evening to get some Christmas stuff. Then it was back to Paul’s dad’s house.

Dominica started packing up the car at six. Quiet night at the house tonight.

Friday. Today we started in Iowa and continued our drive north to Wisconsin.

We were into Minnesota quite quickly. This is my second new state of the trip and my first of the day.

We drove through Minneapolis. We stopped in the area and had lunch at a Yucatan place with Paul’s brother. Lunch was good and Valentina thought that it was really funny that we were eating at a Cancun restaurant in the snow. Liesl and I experimented with several hot sauces and she could handle some really hot ones, but she ended up with one that was too hot and she was nearly in tears from it.

We continued on to Wisconsin and got to Cumberland in the early evening, to Paul’s dad’s house. He had a lot of room for us and we spent the evening there hanging out with his dad. After his dad went to bed, the girls and I hung out at the house while Paul and Dominica did some errands around Cumberland.