USA

Illness part 2 and a lost wedding ring – Hawaii – Days 126-129

paige m5 Comments

Hawaii holds a special place for us as we honeymooned there 9 years ago. Our first trip was mostly spent on the Big Island and Kauai Island, but we did have a layover in Honolulu where we drove and visited Pearl Harbour.

This trip to Honolulu was not always on our itinerary. We knew that we wanted to spend the month of November in Australia but we find ourselves in Bogota, Colombia (those locations are not close to each other). The flight path also wasn’t logical with all trips sending us north and involving at least one stop in the continental USA. The cheaper flight options involved two stops which would mean a 36+ hour journey.

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Columbus – Isabella’s Birthday Present – Day 85-86 (A post by Isabella)

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My favourite tv show is called “Secrets of the Zoo” and it takes place in the Colombus Zoo and the Wilds (two different zoos). The show is about zookeepers and vets who take care of the animals. I said to mom and dad “because we are going to the USA, can we go to the Columbus Zoo?”. They said “No” and I actually believed them. Secretly, mom, dad and Julie were planning a secret birthday present for me. After we left Indianapolis, I thought that we were driving to Cleveland but really dad was driving to my zoos. Mom and dad thought both of the zoos were in Columbus when they booked a hotel there for two nights but when they looked at google maps, they realized the Wilds was 1 1/2 hours further (and out of the way). That meant we had to drive through Columbus to get there and mom thought I would notice from the backseat that we were not driving through Cleveland! Dad thought I would not. Guess who was right? Dad…. I missed all the signs and was doing my homework in the backseat instead.

When we approached the Wilds, mom started to film me.

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The big tourist destinations of Madison & Indianapolis – Day 82-84

Mike PLeave a comment
Family at a mock sports broadcasting studio

We got two more pictures of state capitol buildings by stopping in Madison and Indianapolis. One might ask, why go to Madison at all? The answer for us was logistics. We simply wanted to break a ten-hour drive into two five-hour legs. And on the map, Madison is about the midway point between Minneapolis and Indianapolis. Our real goal was getting to Indianapolis because Paigey had read about a children’s museum there and thought it could be a good place for homeschooling. If you have kids and they aren’t in school, this is the spot for you and is completely worthy of a road trip. We went during a weekday in September and essentially had the museum to ourselves (it was too early in the school year for field trips). I’m not exaggerating, at some of the live demonstrations, our kids were the only 2 people to show up so they got to learn from the scientists one on one. This day, we didn’t even have to pretend to be good teachers.

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Minneapolis and the Golden Gophers- Days 78-81

Mike PLeave a comment
Two kids standing in front of inflatable mascot at a football game

It was an early departure from Grasslands National Park as we anticipated an eight-hour day of driving. We had not really planned on it but we were changing our route and heading back to Toronto through the northern states. Fortunately, we had picked up Julie’s passport the day before which allowed us to take this “southerly” route and avoid a repeat of the drive between Winnipeg and Nipigon. Julie was pumped as she was getting a new country and Isabella was excited as she figured out Olive Gardens are more plentiful in the US than in Canada.

So there we were at 8:30 in the morning somewhere on the Saskatchewan / US border (Morgan to be exact) waiting for US border control to open up the border. Talk about ignorance on my part! I just assumed the border was open all hours of the day (as I did not listen to Paige who said it might be closed). But we had to wait an hour for the gate to be opened up and for us to be allowed through.

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