To know us at all is to know how “we roll” when we travel and if you know that, then you also know that once we get rolling, we’re good. Usually for us it’s all about us getting to that actual point… the point of rolling that is the challenge.
In fairly typical fashion we had a boat load of things to do or needed doing before leaving… you know that last minute type stuff that we all have when getting ready to go on a trip. Things like making sure that the remaining garden plants (four pepper plants and four cucumber plants… and we can’t forget the corn seeds) got in the ground. Ha! I bet you thought I was going to say last minute laundry and shopping and packing. We had all of that too.
So there was the requisite last minute laundry and shopping and packing… and the planting… and as fate would have it, spring was doing its best summer impression. Humidity and low 90’s… yuck! I can sweat merely sitting in that kind of weather… never mind doing any kind of work. It seems that my progeny have inherited this trait as well. So in addition to trying to get ready, it was also one huge sweat fest… all for one and sweat for all.
Now the theory was to leave midnight Sunday… or I guess 12am Monday pending your perspective. In any event, I was grooming myself by attempting to shift my sleep schedule somewhat so that I could squeeze in some shuteye Sunday night prior to our departure. For that reason, Friday night (the 21st) I stayed up until 2:30… not all that uncommon for me. Saturday night ‘til 5am, then back up by 7:30 Sunday morning. I figured that this should leave me good and tired come evening. I thought, you know, we'd finish packing, I'd get the truck loaded up and then I'd lie down around 6pm, get up around 11:30, take a shower and as I did, everyone would be sitting patiently waiting (with hands folded in their laps) for Dad to get done so we could leave. Then that magical moment would come when we'd joyfully skip out of the house holding hands singing some happy song.
Anyway, these idealistic moments and ideas forever end up being talked about in the “sounds good in theory” category… since it does… well… sound good in theory and (to this point in our travels) has yet to come to fruition in its application thus avoiding becoming a reality and hence remaining (in our lives) a theory. Our estimated time of departure (ETD) always takes a hit as we never hit our ETD no matter when we decide our ETD should be.
Alright everyone, let’s get it in gear here (time waits for no one and least of all when you are in need of more of it) we still have a lot that needs to get done and the meter is running and most importantly I need to get some sleep before we go. As my dad used to say, “Mach schnell!”
I won’t bore you (any more than I have already) with the details, but I will say that 6pm came and went. 7pm rolled around and I was not yet tucked in… nor was the truck loaded. I did lie down and manage to fall asleep (in spite of it being rather uncomfortable temp and humidity wise) only to be awakened by the phone 30 minutes later. Between the heat and the fact that my mind was going in a thousand different directions, it was becoming clearer and clearer that our “theory” was once again being tested and categorically shot down. Yet again, we were about to embark on a cross country trip (12hrs on the road) with the driver getting (for all intents and purposes) no sleep! So after trying for almost 3hrs and seeing that sleep… any real sleep… wasn’t going to be happening, I got up, ate something and started loading up the truck and consequently started sweating. I hit the shower and thought that I’d try my luck at catching some Zzzz’s in the now loaded truck.
But first…
In addition to all the aforementioned delaying type things, one bigger one (at the end) was that we couldn’t find Ana’s shoes. For some odd reason, when they (the younger kids) take them (their shoes) off, they never hit the floor together. Often one shoe will be visible and the other will be MIA. This time, the shoe gremlin outdid himself as nobody saw where he hid either of them and it was an all out “WTH fest” as to where those damn shoes were. Admittedly we were not ready to leave at midnight, but having to put out the APB on the missing shoes and at the same time trying to find a suitable replacement pair to take, put us further behind the ETD 8-ball.
Realizing that sleeping was a higher priority (for me) than searching for shoes, I made my way out to the truck and managed to eke out a few extra measly minutes of sleep. I knew (based on previous and extensive prior experience) that this wasn’t going to cut it in the long run.
At long last, a suitable pair of footwear had been located and that meant it was finally time to get the wagon train a-movin’. For those wondering (and I know you are) “at exactly what time did you get your wagon train moving?” … we left at 2:45 in the AM. So in our niche of the world… we’re getting better, our times are improving as we are getting closer to our ETDs. Maybe someday we might… sorry, it’s hard to type this without laughing as I do so… maybe someday we might actually get out on time.
After a drive by to check out (and adjust) our lighting (lights that we were leaving on) we were ready to take aim at the interstate. Away we went…
Driving at night/early morning is well… wrought with perils simply because it’s dark, I’m getting older and my one eye isn’t getting any stronger. Factor in the sleep deprivation… let’s just say the sleep deprivation definitely adds a certain element. Or as I like to call it… challenge. You may be asking yourself… “Geez, why don’t they leave when it’s light out?” Perfectly valid, but what it really comes down to is the “when we arrive time”… or in our case the “theoretical planning of arrival”.
In order to save come coinage, we try to make it to our destination in the least amount of days as possible. This more often than not equates to long days of driving and in most cases 10-12+ hours. That’s a long day without kids… it’s seems longer with them. Our logic… or theory is this; leave at say 7am and you arrive in time for dinner and then not much else and in most cases, just bed. Leave at midnight-ish and you arrive (in theory) with better than half your day left… so you don’t lose a day to travel. At any rate, my inner Clark (Clark Griswold) was showing as I had it all figured out. If we left at midnight, we’d get to the Michigan/Ontario border right about breakfast time. I also found out that there was a Cracker Barrel (CB) stateside right there in Port Huron, MI too… perfect! It’s all coming together… in theory anyway.
What’s that crinkling?
We’re on the road for like 15 minutes and from the back row we hear from Ana, “Why do I hear crinkling?” The “crinkling” she was hearing (amidst the road noise) was a fiber bar being opened up in the very front row. Along with my advancing age and old eye, I also know that eating well on the road is challenging. I was trying to be proactive and was taking a preemptive strike in making sure things were um… kept moving. And about that… I can remember when I was young(er) not having to worry about things like making sure that I had enough fiber or making sure that I had Advil and eye drops and hand sanitizer… and well… you get the picture.
So we’re rolling along and not shocking at all (after a couple of hours) I’m experiencing some technical difficulties in staying awake. You’d be correct in thinking that leaving some 2 ½ hours later puts us that much closer to daybreak… while it does do just that, daybreak still didn’t come nearly fast enough. We stopped at a rest stop in Michigan at daybreak and shortly after that, we ended up pulling off somewhere (in the early morning daylight) and slept/napped in some restaurant’s parking lot for about an hour… it took some of the edge off, but predictably not too long after getting back on the road… sleepiness crept back in. Sleepiness was an ever present presence and constant companion, even as my navigator too as she (Julie/my navigator) spent plenty of time sleeping.
After putting some miles behinds us, we were fast approaching the US/Canada border. That meant that we were fast approaching Port Huron. That meant that we were approaching Cracker Barrel or so we thought. Seeing signs for Port Huron exits, one of them being the business exit, and not seeing any CB signs and running out of exits before Canada, I suggested that perhaps we take the business route exit. I also joked that the sign for CB was probably just around the next bend. Upon exiting, and seeing that there was no “business” to be seen, we promptly made the decision to turn around and get back on only to find that we could not get back on going east. Having no choice but to get on going west, we had to backtrack a few miles before we could turn around. In a typical “it figures” moment, the sign for CB was indeed just around that next bend.
Finally breakfast! Never mind it was closer to lunch time. Lucky for me CB serves breakfast all day! So with my belly full, I did that walk that you do when you’ve eaten too much back to the car. That slow waddle where you think (or at least I do), "Man, I ate way too much!" I plopped my rear in my seat and hoped that the fullness wouldn't last too long. With the border literally minutes away, we headed on.
Now I must mention as an aside here that based on being accepted to the family bereavement camp, we plotted out a path to take us to Niagara Falls... via Ontario that would have us staying on the Canadian side. By the time we found out that we were accepted to the bereavement camp, it left us with not enough time to get passports. We found out three weeks before camp started and 3 weeks is the short side of the 3-6 week window they were saying it would take to get a passport. We could have tried to get them expedited, but even then there was no guarantee that we’d get them on time and that’s to say nothing of the cash it would take to get expedited passports. Let the researching and phone calling begin because we really wanted to go via Ontario and stay on the Canadian side. From what we both were able to gather from our respective phone calls and searches it seemed that we could do it with birth certificates and Julie and I each showing our license. Getting into Canada wasn’t going to be the “problem”… getting back stateside could pose the potential hang up.
We roll to the border, he asks where are we going and how long do we plan on staying, I answer and we’re in.
Well, that wasn’t so bad. Okay then, getting into Canada proved to be a breeze.
It didn’t seem to take too long (from that point) to get to Niagara Falls. Now to find our hotel (the Fallsview Marriott) with the nice comfortable bed... I know what you're thinking, the whole point of trying to leave when we do... I'm only going to lie on it until we decide what we're going to do for the rest of the day. Directions say turn here, turn there and... Ahh! I see it, now where do we pull in? See that, too. Finally! After a long drive, I am moments away from being able to lie down and stretch out... until we figure out what we're doing of course.
It's valet parking only and so that meant that we needed to figure out exactly what we needed to bring in with us since we didn't need to bring in everything. We basically packed for two trips. For camp, we were going to be in need of linens and towels and pillows, blankets... here at the hotel, not needed. After spending almost an hour (between kids having to go to the bathroom and deciding what to unload to take to our room) we schlep our bags in. We had the kids waiting over on the side with our stuff... and there was a lot of stuff... as Julie and I waited in line to check in.
As we're standing there, I'm thinking to myself that from the location of this building, I just can't see how we're going to be able to see the falls from our room. When I booked it, I booked a room with a view of the falls. Geographically, I didn't see how this was going to be feasible. So all the while I'm wondering... we're moving closer to the desk and we are next. It was at that moment that I made a realization. See there was a sign on a pole and it read, "Bla bla bla b-bla e-check in bla bla Hilton bla bla b-bla." Hilton??? So I pointed the sign out to Julie and she's like "what?"... thinking so what about e-check in. I then point to the confirmation paperwork that reads "Marriott" and point to the sign again.
D'oh!
C'mon kids, pick up your bags... we're in the wrong place. As fate would have it, our truck was already whisked away and tucked in the garage. The concierge was very helpful in getting our vehicle back and giving us instruction to find the Marriott. We waited for the truck to come back and got it reloaded, only to go through a similar process down the street @ the Marriott. Of course we did much better having just completed a dry run up the street.
I can hear that bed calling me...
It was interesting though when we went to check in and we handed our confirmation paperwork over. The girl had to call another girl over and that girl had to make a phone call. Though it was never completely explained as to why there was this “puzzlement”, Julie did ask if it was good for us and they both nodded their head saying yes… as in like, "Oh yeah... way good for you."
Just want to work in a "thank-you" here... Our stay at the Marriott was made possible by Julie’s cousin’s (Joe) mother-in-law. She works for Marriott and got us the family and friends rate. Our room was awesome… 11th floor with a spectacular view of the falls... see photo above. Can’t say thanks enough to Amy (Joe’s wife), Joe and especially Amy’s mom.
KEIYH
