Home Sweet Home

We arrived home late last night after some shopping outside of Seattle. The end has come to an awesome and unforgettable trip.

We hope you have enjoyed following our 'great Canadian journey'. It's sad for us to end our travels but as Nicholas said, "We'll never forget the memories."

Thanks to all of you who sent us your comments and thoughts ... glad to know we weren't alone!

Here is our last provincial "Welcome sign" of our trip!

Here are seven interesting facts from our trip ...

- gas was always cheaper in the rest Canada than in BC (in fact, it was less than a dollar in all of the other 9 provinces with Ottawa having the lowest at 85 cents!)

- number of stops at McDonalds: 0

- number of stops for fuel: 33

- number of s'mores eaten: 34

- total kilometres driven: 15,368 km

- number of trailer tires replaced: 2

- number of amazing memories for Jacqueline and Nicholas: infinite

Heading home

We've continued our journey home through the U.S. and we're making very good time on the 4-lane highways. We've stopped at Mt. Rushmore here and you can see the four Millard faces just below the four president's faces. We managed to arrive when the extremely large Sturgis Motorbike Rally was taking place and we have never seen so many leather-clad bikers in our lives!

After that we made our way to Little Big Horn where the Sioux Indians and Custer's Cavalry had an unfortunate meeting. It was a good history lesson for all of us.

We managed to complete a large jigsaw puzzle of Canada in honour of our travel across Canada. Here we are after putting in the last piece!

Tonight we arrive home (but not after a little shopping in Seattle)!

If you build it, Ken will come

We are returning home through the United States mainly because it is much faster and to catch a glimpse of a few interesting sights of our neighbours to the south.  You may have watched the movie Field of Dreams from 1989 and saw Shoeless Joe Jackson appear from an Iowa cornfield. It's one of Ken's favourite movies and the whole family recently watched it a few months ago. Since, we were very close to the farm and cornfield used for this film, we thought we would drop by and see if any ballplayer ghosts would appear. It's a modest little set-up with the family owners opening up their yard and ball field to visitors for free ... but everyone's welcome to buy something at the souvenir shop. It was an enjoyable bit of Americana.

To cool off after a long day on the highway past hundreds of cornfields (we don't know what they could do with so much corn) we went for a dip in the campground's pool.  Tomorrow it's Mount Rushmore!

Drenched in Niagara and up high in Toronto

We've been so busy having fun we haven't kept up our blog!  On Wednesday we arrived in Niagara Falls and the kids were in awe of the water rushing over the edge.  This massive natural force is truly incredible even with the many outrageous tourist traps surrounding it.  But as you can see in the photo, we may have succumbed to one of those gimmicks. All we know is we had one of the most exciting rides of our lives riding this jet boat up and down the class 5 rapids and around the whirlpool down from the falls. There are actually about 48 people in the boat but most of them are covered with water.  You can just make out Jacqueline second from the back on the far right. This second shot was taken with our waterproof camera shortly after one of the 'big ones' hit us. Needless to say, we got soaked but it was worth it!

Yesterday, we have saved the biggest Canadian city for the last stop on our Canadian tour.  As proud western Canadians, we have to admit we gave Toronto four thumbs up after exploring a good portion of the city.  We were able to go to the top of the CN Tower for a phenomenal view.  We checked out the downtown on a rickshaw 

pulled by a fit university student and went to the Hockey Hall of Fame where we hugged the Stanley Cup.  Chinatown and Kensington market were quite interesting so we stayed and had dinner at the little Hungary Thai restaurant.  

In the evening, we took in the sights and sounds at the heart of the city in Dundas square on a Friday night.  The closest thing to compare it to is Times Square in NY since the massive billboards and megatron bigscreens filled all sides of the square. There was ample street entertainment and we loved it all.  The Caribbean festival, Caribana, was starting out so there was a distinct Caribbean flavour in the city.  To close off the day, we settled in for some dessert at the 99 Wayne Gretzky restaurant.  It was quite a visit!  Now, we're off to Detroit.