Mom Trip Wrap Up Part 1

First, my calendar math was way off.... So here are the real final days of the trip. 

Saturday, October 4 - mom and I head out early in the morning and head to Niagara Falls. We catch a tour bus that is only supposed to take 4 hours but ended up to be more like 5 and a half hours. But, we ride the Maid of the Mist and get up close and personal to the falls. We then do the Cavern of the Winds tour and get even more up close and personal. We bought some fudge because we really aren't  very good together. And there was a strange "4-D" movie experience that was part of the ticket that we purchased. It was a 3-D movie, or at least we got 3-D glasses but then while in the theatre there was a breeze and they would spritz us with water "from the falls" at particular moments. I have to say it was an exactly pleasant experience since the whole day was pretty cool and rainy and the 3-Dness of the movie did a real number on my eyes. After the tour, mom and I hopped in the trusty car and headed to London, Ontario. This was about a 2 hour drive, not counting the hour it took to drive through customs at the Canadian border. This day was, I believe the only time that I actually snapped. These last 2 or so hours of driving were in the dark and in a portion of the world that my US atlas didn't really cover. At one highway interchange about 45 minutes across the border we decided to not listen to the Onstar directions and briefly ended up going the wrong way. I was having residual blurriness from the movie and being tired and needing to get my eyes checked, so I snapped at mom and told her that I needed her to help read the signs more. We pulled off shortly to switch drivers because mom wasn't having blurry eye issues at the time and I wasn't really fit to be behind the wheel of the car. I grabbed a protein bar and after eating that I felt much better and realized that I had actually been shaking. So, what we learned from this little episode is to 1) not question Onstar when we are on a Canadian highway in the middle of nowhere and 2) not to let me get hangry (that would be hungry and angry combined). Neither of us should have gone all day having eaten a McDonald breakfast, a bag of chips, and some fudge....not smart and we made certain that we did much better the rest of the trip. (Sadly, I have no pictures to post of this portion of the trip because I have been too lazy to download them from my camera and I didn't take any with my phone.)

Sunday, October 5 - Our original plan was to go to Sault Ste. Marie, MI and see the locks that are there and see the ships move between the lakes. This had been a spot that mom and dad had visited and dad really enjoyed it, but as we were driving this morning, mom took a look at the map and proposed that we see if we could cancel our room there and get one in Mackinaw City instead, which would keep us from having to back track and would allow more time on Mackinac Island, which was our primary destination for Monday. As luck would have it, we were able to change our plans and got into the hotel early evening (we didn't get away from London as early as we had planned as we needed to rest from the tense night before...another reason to change our plans and cut out a extra couple of hours of driving). After we settled into our room, we walked to a little place next door called Darrows, which as it turns out had been a spot where mom and dad ate once on their travels. It was here that mom and I had the best cherry pie. We the walked down to the bridge and got caught in the rain, which wasn't too terrible as we just returned to our room, changed into warm stretchy pants and tucked into bed for the rest of the evening. 

Here is a shot from the bridge coming back into the United States. 

Here is a picture of me and mom at a ready stop in Michigan. We had an ongoing activity of taking a picture and texting it to my sister and quiz her on if she could tell where we were. And yeah, I have zero makeup on... I decided to give up on that on this trip, not that I wear very much anyway...

Some more of the beautiful fall color that we saw at hand rest stop on the way to Mackinaw City. 

It is really hard to tell, but this is a picture from our hotel balcony of the Mackinac Bridge. If we had gone on to Sault Ste. Marie, we would have crossed this bridge twice.