nocureforgravity

No visit to Minnesota would be complete without a visit to – you guessed it! – the Mall of America. It’s very important that we experience Middle America in all its glory, so we decided it would be worth taking the time to go to the Mall of America and seeing at least a bit of it.

So, after getting ready and saying goodbye to Chris & Kate, we found our way out of their neighborhood, passed the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and arrived at the largest shopping mall in the country. We arrived at the perfect time – it was just before 10 am, the non-holiday opening time for malls everywhere.
Continue reading “Corn Fields Forever: MN to SD” →

Last night, after we finished posting our last entry and left Borders, we went to meet up with our friends Katie & Matt at their condo. We got the tour of their spacious new condo, and then went out to dinner at a pub called Charlie’s. They had a great selection of beers (and cider!) on tap and a good menu of nouveau comfort foods. After dinner, we went back to Matt & Katie’s apartment and – with the help of their friends DirectTV and TiVo – watched baseball and the Olympics.

This morning Dave and I got up a bit early in order to say goodbye and thanks to Katie & Matt before they headed off to work. Then we got ready and were packed and out of the apartment by 9 am.

Unfortunately, getting out of Chicago was not as easy as getting out of the apartment. We made a few wrong choices at the beginning, then missed an offramp, and to make a long story short, it was 10 am before we were reasonably on our way out of the city. We were SO not happy. Then the rain started just as we finally got onto 90 East. Luckily at least that didn’t last too long. And once we finally put some miles between ourselves and the city, though, our moods lightened.
Continue reading “More Midwestern Adventures: IL to MN” →

I fear that some of our fans at this point may be getting bored with the narrative of our trip, since we’ve mostly been hanging out with friends and dealing with administrative moving crap. I can’t make any promises that our blog will get less boring, but I do promise that it will be very different in a couple of days. We have two more nights of “city life”, and then we’ll start camping and seeing some of the amazing national treasures to be found in the middle of this country. At least at that point you’ll start seeing some more interesting photos.

This morning we went out to breakfast with the Wierdas at The Omelette House, which seems to be a small Traverse City chain. It was delicious – if you’re ever there, I highly recommend the homemade cherry pecan bread. Then we bid our friends farewell (no hugs from Maddie, since we hadn’t really been there long enough for her to warm up to us that much) and got back on Hwy 37.
Continue reading “Continuing Around Lake Michigan: MI to IL” →

This morning we managed to sleep through the pitter patter of little feet. We took our time getting out of bed and getting ready, and had a late breakfast of pancakes, waffles, and watermelon. Emmy and Gwen ate breakfast with the grownups, but Mac had already eaten so he was in the next room playing. In the middle of breakfast he came into the dining room driving this huge robot (well… “huge” being over a foot tall). Of course the girls wanted to play with it too, but Scott got precedence, asking Mac what the different buttons did. The thing kept the kids busy all morning. Emmy was mortified when she accidentally made the robot’s claw come off, thinking she had broken Mac’s new favorite toy, but was very relieved when I showed her that the robot’s hand went back in easily and actually had been designed to shoot out.
Continue reading “Driving Across Michigan: Saginaw to Traverse City” →

Last night I flipped through the phone book and then looked around online a bit, in order to find a good place to go to church on Sunday morning. We settled on an Evangelical Free Church called Providence Church, located in Avon, OH, which is about 20 minutes west of Cleveland.
Continue reading “Wholesome Midwest Fun: OH to MI” →

Although we’ve never been to Cleveland before, we decided it would be too much to try to see the sights in Cleveland and also try to make it to Joyce & Sean’s wedding by 3 pm. Plus, we’ve been running so long on so little sleep, it seemed prudent to take advantage of the quiet comfort of a hotel room to catch up on some ZZZs. We’re sure to be back. One of my goals in life is to see a home game for every team in Major League Baseball, so unless the Indians leave Cleveland sometime in the next 10-20 years (unlikely!), we’ll be back to go to Jacobs Field, and we can check out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at that point.
Continue reading “A Sunny Wedding Day in Cleveland” →

Today was mostly a travel day. After having a nice breakfast of canteloupe and “Timbits” (for Dunkin’ Donuts fans, the equivalent of Munchkins… for normal people, they’re donut holes) with Keith and Joanne, we loaded up the car around 9:15 am and headed out of Toronto at rush hour. Brilliant! It could have been worse, because we were moving pretty well most of the time, but it seems like the people in Toronto drive like maniacs. The rest of Canada wasn’t so bad, but these are big-city drivers, I guess.

We got to the border crossing at Buffalo around 11:30 and it took us about 10 minutes to get across. The guy at the border asked us even fewer questions than the Canadian woman had on Tuesday! Very impressive homeland security!
Continue reading “International Crossing #2: ON to NY then to OH” →

We slept in a bit at Keith & Jo’s apartment and awoke to a grey overcast Toronto morning. The weather didn’t really motivate us to skip out of the apartment and go sightseeing. Beside which, we still had to sort out the mess with paying the movers. We were both starting to get really frustrated with Fleet, Bank of America, Ayer Moving & Storage, and North American Van Lines.
Continue reading “Fun and Frustration in Toronto” →

This morning we woke up early and beat the rush for the showers. (Did I mention that the place we stayed at in Montreal had shared bathrooms?) We were packed and downstairs at 8 am, ready for the “breakfast” part of the B&B. It was the two of us plus a young woman from Japan who had just finished studying English in Vancouver for three months, who was traveling around Canada sightseeing. Belva took good care of us. We had tea and OJ, a sizable fruit cup, homemade bread for toast with jam, bacon, and eggs. Unfortunately she didn’t ask us how we wanted our eggs… they all came out over easy, which is not my favorite. She sat down and chatted with the three of us as we finished our breakfast. She told us a few stories about the house. Apparently she has only lived in the house for about 8 years, and only more recently decided to open it up as a bed & breakfast. Earlier in the house’s history it had been some kind of shelter for women, and in the early part of the century it belonged to a wealthy man who had a fountain in the middle of the room that was now an open dining room / living room. Very interesting.
Continue reading “Canadian Adventure: QC to ON” →

After sleeping in a bit, we awoke this morning in Lake Placid NY to a beautiful sunny day. It was a nice change from the rain we’ve had for the past two days. We watched a bit of the Athens 2004 Olympics before heading back to the site of the 1932 and 1980 Olympics. Dave didn’t have his camera with him last night when we were skating, so we went back to take a few photos of the rinks. We also got a chance to watch some figure skating practices, as well as some women (girls? hard to tell with all the gear on) hockey players either practicing or doing some kind of tryout. It was almost as cool as the night before – it was cool to see people who can actually skate using the rinks, but it was awesome having the place all to ourselves last night. This time, though, we got to sit on the U.S. bench in the 1980 arena before fleeing to avoid getting hit by pucks slapped by female hockey players.

Then we walked up and down the main street of the town a bit, to take a few more pictures, enjoy the beautiful weather, and take a look at the lake in the sunshine.
Continue reading “International Crossing #1: NY to QC” →