Road Trip to Canada Day 2.

Canada Trip 2009

a.k.a. “The Anita Adventure”

Day 2.   Friday morning and we were ready to finish our trek to Canada.  We got up and went downstairs for free breakfast.  While sitting in the little dining room eating, I began to feel a bit of a lump in my throat, which in my world means anxiety attack.  (pretend there’s a little frowny face here) 

So I stayed calm, left Thea and Summer enjoying the breakfast and went back up to the room so I could take some anti-anxiety medication and do some relaxation exercises before we hit the road.  My tummy attacked me a bit (but I won’t go into the details here for your benefit…..you’re welcome) and then all was well.  Until, that is, Thea realized she had forgotten to bring her medications.  That she needs.  Every day.   She looked in her purse several times, in her luggage several times, in all the other bags she lugs with her.  Several times!  No medicines.  But we prevail in crises damnit!  She called her doctor, found a Walgreen’s around the corner, drove over there and took care of getting a few pills called in to last her until she got back home.  Then she came back and waited for them to get it ready while I laid on the bed and did relaxation techniques of breathing and relaxing and picturing myself on a beautiful white sand beach with Kenny Chesney.  Aahhh, so relaxing……

Then we hit the road again, picked up Thea’s meds on the way, and off we went toward Ohio.  I think having already halfway diverted an anxiety attack I asked Thea to drive so I could just take a little Dramamine-induced nap, so Thea actually drove us across the border and into Canada.  Which turned out to be a VERY interesting part of our trip.  I almost feel like it deserves its own day’s post but since it DID happen on day 2 I will tell it here.  But first here’s a few sights we saw in Ohio.

I took THIS NEXT PHOTO specifically for ABBY.

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Almost there now!

Summer and I have never been out of the country, so it was a big deal, this trip, especially for Summer.  She’d been documenting our travels with my flip video camera and loving every second of being the videographer.  I told her to be sure to get a shot of the border guy asking for and taking our passports from Thea when we drove up to the little booth.  Well, the border dude did NOT like that.  At all.  He saw Summer with the camera and immediately said, “No pictures.  You need to turn that off.”  So of course she turned it off and then he said, “I need you to delete that.”  I think maybe he thought it was a photo of him, but it was probably only about 3 seconds of video because that’s all she had a chance to video before he saw her and freaked out.  haha  But hey, no problem dude!  I took the camera from her and deleted the video lickety split!  I thought it was all cool and we were done.  Then he began with his questions.  Where are you going?  What are you going to do there?  How long are you going to stay there?  Do you have any guns in the car?  (We laughed at that one)  Do you have more than $10,000 cash with you?  (We laughed harder at that one!)  Apparently the questions are standard procedure, though, not because Thea and I looked like suspicious criminals. 

So then when we thought we were all done and free to go through the line, he sticks a yellow paper to the windshield and tells us we need to go to customs.   Niiiice.  I figure, hey, why not?  It’s my first time crossing the border, might as well see what’s it like to be detained and arrested at the border too!  What the hell.  Adds to the “adventure” right?  NOT REALLY.  haha  Thea was hoping for a “strip search” or a frisking, but no such luck.  Just kidding.  Maybe.  HA.  We drove over to the customs garage and parked and waited for someone to come tell us what to do. 

I took these next 2 photos on the way in before the “booth incident.”

We sat in the car and waited probably 5-7 minutes.  Hard to say cause it felt like forever, of course!   Meanwhile, we watched in our rearview mirror as they searched a minivan in the parking spot behind us.  Then they proceeded to put each person that was in the van, about 8 of them, up against the van spread eagle one at a time and “frisk” them just like you see on TV and in the movies!  WOW.  At this point Thea says, “They’re probably going to search our car.”  No big deal since we don’t have anything illegal with us.  haha  I was pretty proud of myself internally for remaining calm the entire time.  We got tired of waiting and weren’t sure if we were supposed to be sitting and waiting anyway, so Thea got out and grabbed the yellow paper to go in search of a policeman.  Or whatever they are.  Probably policemen, right?  And about that time one came walking over to us.  Turns out the yellow paper said to make sure we deleted the video.  Man, was the booth dude paranoid or what?  This policeman didn’t seem to care too much about it.  He asked if it was deleted, I said yes, and he said we were free to go.  He didn’t even check!  Woo hoo!  Free at last!  We jumped back into the car, buckled up, and headed out of the customs garage.  I turned to look one last time at that minivan behind us and saw they had lined all the passengers up and had them sitting on the curb in handcuffs!  Man, I was dying to take the video camera out and get a shot of that as we drove away!  But I was too chicken and Thea said NO and I think she may have physically harmed me if I’d tried.  haha  But OH BOY was I tempted!  And darnit, I should have asked that nice policeman if I could keep the yellow paper for my scrapbook!  Then we drove over the Ambassador Bridge and that means hello Canada!  Yay!  Here’s the bridge.

That put us into the city of Windsor.  Not far into Windsor we stopped and shopped here.

Neat little place.  Similar to a Dollar Tree store that we have in Illinois.  Lots of little $1 trinkets.  We picked up some candy bars I’d never seen or heard of for Summer’s classmates as souvenirs and I got a lanyard that’s printed with the Canadian flag that I’m going to use as a ribbon in my Canada scrapbook.  Summer got her Daddy a keychain.  We headed toward Wallaceburg.  Drove through lots of country, and it really reminded me of the area where I live in Illinois, very rural.  Lots of fields and farms and pretty blue skies.  See?

Here’s the “Queen Of The Road”.  Of course, that will be the title that I make on my Pazzles for the scrapbook page with this photo.  haha

In the early evening around 4:30 we arrived in Wallaceburg FINALLY at our hotel, The Oaks Inn.  They were glad to see us… 

So we lugged all our stuff up the stairs to our room on the 2nd floor.  Why the hell did I choose the 2nd floor when reserving our room?  WHY?  But I digress…. I called Anita and made plans to meet the next afternoon.  She invited us to come to her house.  And now it was finally sinking in that I was HERE and I was going to meet HER.  Very exciting!  A lady named Julie had heard about me coming from a message board online and had offered to let me stay at her home.  How NICE is that?  Seriously, who does that?  But when I told her it was actually 3 of us coming, she retracted the offer.  Just kidding Julie!  haha  I did want to meet her, though, because it was such a wonderfully kind gesture, so we made plans to meet at our hotel’s restaurant.  While we waited for her, we took a look at the menu and this was the first thing I saw.  Totally cracked me up.  And also grossed me out a little bit.

So then Julie arrived and we had a nice time.  She was very nice and funny and cute as a button.  See?

Summer warmed up to Julie after a while (she’s a bit shy) and then educated her on all the things she could ever want to know (and she didn’t!) about the Wii game Super Smash Brothers Brawl.  Turns out Julie has a son the same age as Summer or close to it, I can’t remember which, so she was able to “speak Summer’s language” of Wii games and Pokemon.  haha  Speaking of Pokemon, here’s what my kid does on the back side of a paper placmat when she’s bored because the 3 women she’s with are talking shop.

And speaking of talking shop, here’s the cool scrapbook Julie brought with her to show us.  She made it out of cereal boxes!  Is that COOL or what?  And scraps!  She said she didn’t buy a single thing to make this book.  It was so awesome.  She promised she’d take good photos of it and post them on her blog so I could show all my scrappy friends soon. 

I felt like an idiot because I never even thought of bringing anything of mine to show her or Anita.  The meal was good, but the waitress made me so made I was tempted to not leave her a tip.  She actually SHUSHED Julie.  What the hell?  I was speechless.  I wanted to smack her.  The waitress, not Julie.  haha  So we finished our meal, visited a while, and then said goodbye to Julie.  I’m so glad we got to meet her.  She was so friendly and nice, just as I had hoped she would be. 

Speaking of visiting a while, this is what my kid looks like when she’s bored and waiting for us to shut up so we can leave the restaurant.  Can’t you just imagine what she’s thinking?

That’s it!  Good night and see you tomorrow!

To read the other posts about this trip, click on the links below

Day 1

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5