Road Trip Recap - Day Two

Before we get on the road for day two, we have some late-breaking news: NorthernToddler is now the (very) proud owner of some big-boy underwear! In an effort to bolster his growing interest in using the potty, we are using the underwear as a 'motivational tool' - he wants to wear them, so he has to use the potty instead of a diaper.....y'all are all adults - you know the basics - I'm done explaining! Just wanted everyone to know that NorthernToddler is now - at times - sporting Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Bert+Ernie on his butt. (As a side note, could somebody run and find my grown-up vocabulary? I seem to have misplaced it. I never in my life imagined that using the word "potty" would be a major part of my day. Come to think of it, I also never thought that I'd be accountable to a two-year-old for my bathroom habits. "You going potty, Daddy?" is now a regular question in this house..........)

Here's a portrait of the proud new tighty-whitey owner. (He picked the style, he learned to stand in line at the cashier, and he paid for them too. He also learned that it's more polite to wait until you're outside the store to put on your new skivvies...) Doesn't he look so proud of his new undies? Hopefully, you'll be reading about his completed potty training soon (wishful thinking?!). Now, if you will fasten your seatbelts, we can resume our roadtrip....

Heading out of Sudbury on the morning of day two, we traveled through an industrial area. In fact, there were so many manufacturing plants, mining operations, utilities, and such, that you would have thought you were in the industrial heart of Canada. We saw this thing:

and stopped to take a picture. It looks all the world like a reduced-scale version of the Eiffel Tower. Best we could tell, it's an antenna for the mining business located there. Chalk it up as Odd Sight #18 on this trip.

Now, if you're wondering how we can remember all of this stuff about the trip, here's the secret: we kept a notebook handy and jotted down everything that sparked our interest. Most of the entries were logged by NorthernDaddy, but here's one that Mommy deemed book-worthy...and quoting directly, the book says, "Daddy deliberately crossed train tracks in front of train". Um.....guilty! The train was moving really slowly, and it was at least 200 feet away...and the crossing lights might have been flashing, but I had a lot of miles to cover that day!

Odd Sight #23 happened as we rolled down a deserted section of the TransCanada Highway: Maybe you've heard that we've seen a weasel around our yard. Maybe you know that weasels have a thing for killing and eating chickens. (Maybe because they, you know, taste like chicken!) (These are the jokes, people! You can laugh, or you can just sit there.) Well, we had been on the road for several days, and weasel thoughts were far behind us, when we suddenly saw another weasel! He was hooked on our roof rack and was sticking his ugly little face down onto our windshield begging for help as we sped down the road at 75mph! Not really - but we did have one run across the road in front of us. If I'd have realized what it was just a second earlier, he'd have been flattened under the tire!

We droned through some very remote and beautiful country, and eventually made it to the Sault Ste Marie border crossing. Did I mention that on our way into Canada, the border agent was a cute, very pleasant woman? And that it took just under two minutes to convince her that we weren't bad people (and that NorthernToddler wasn't smuggling booze in his blankie)? We waited in line to get into the US for more than an hour. (Sitting eighty feet in the air on a bridge overlooking the canal and locks - not too bad.) As we pulled up to the crossing control booth, no less than eleven cameras were aimed at us (just our lane! - and every lane has that many cameras!), and there's no telling how many sensors sniffed our car - they probably knew that NorthernToddler's diaper needed changing before we did! And, in our experience, CBP agents (that's ours - the USA) are not anywhere as cute and polite as their Canadian counterparts!

(At least we weren't like the car just ahead of us - they aroused the suspicion of two agents who then walked with their car to the booth - which took about thirty minutes because of the backup at the border - and then escorted it to an inspection area and tore that car apart! As we rolled through the gate into the US, there were bags flying out of that car and tools being readied - and I think I might have even seen them removing a fender!.......All I know is, our crossing experience was MUCH better than theirs!)

We had an early dinner at the Lighthouse Restaurant, where NorthernToddler was complimented on his exceptionally good behavior - which was interesting, because his parents thought that he was slightly, irritatingly rowdy. I guess it's nice to know that your kid is so well behaved that even on a bad night, he's better than most! (I give NorthernMommy credit for teaching him his manners!) (And to that waitress serving the other table, I'm sorry that Toddler attempted to grab your rear end as you passed by - he's not normally so direct. He prefers to flirt a little first...)

All of the wedding guests were invited on a short cruise on Lake Huron (and Lake Michigan - we crossed under the bridge that separates them)(oops! I just Googled it, and apparently we were officially in the Straits of Mackinac. Sorry for the misinformation.), and after getting soaked - it's a long story involving walking in torrential rains and misunderstandings of the departure time - we finally got NorthernToddler on the boat he had been hoping to ride for the past two days (Mommy's fault for telling him about the cruise - he's got a one track mind). Great cruise - saw family and friends, saw the pilothouse, saw BIG ships.

One note about traveling with a two-year-old: don't book hotels based on cool features. We got a nice suite in a hotel with an attached waterpark. We'd seen the pictures and were excited about the waterpark. We checked in, got changed into our swim gear, and bee-lined it for the pool. It was great! Waterslides, fountains, spray cannons, kids splashing and screaming with joy - it had everything. Including a pirate. A very bad pirate. A pirate who would almost instantly crush our happiness about the waterpark. You see, he was a large bucket molded in the shape of a pirates's head (with parrot!). This bucket held somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 gallons of water. Hoses slowly filled the bucket, which took about five minutes. And when the bucket was full, it tipped - blasting the play area with water and creating a horrendously loud noise. NorthernToddler freaked when this happened. He huddled in close, refused to look at the bucket (or the waterpark), and kept screeching, "PIRATE GET ME!!!"
The best we could get him to do was to get into the plain old regular swimming pool on the other side of the room. Even then, he kept a hawk's eye on that mean ol' pirate. We didn't get to spend more than two minutes in that cool waterpark - and that's why it stinks traveling with two-year-olds!