Summer Road Trip

Every year Nicole and I take a long vacation to some awesome place, usually to celebrate a marriage. Recently, we have visited Puerto Vallarta, the Black Hills, Boston, and San Francisco. This year, the marriage of Andrew Bussey to Lauren Dacey in Canandaigua, New York motivated us to visit all five of the Great Lakes.

We traveled a total of 2559 miles, including Canada's kilometers, and provided an unexpected $31.70 in tolls to the local economies. Here are some important things you missed by not hiding in our back seat.

View Nicole and Adam's Tour of the Great Lakes in a larger map

Indiana and Ohio are terrible states.

If you require people to pay when you enter your state, pay to get off your interstate, and then pay when you leave your state, you might be a terrible state.

Western New York is beautiful.

Think of the rolling hills of western Wisconsin, but make them bigger, reduce the beer consumption, and add more quaintness. New York was a nice sight to see after suffering through the previous three states on our trip.

Andrew Bussey married Lauren Dacey.

The wedding service's Catholic mass was highlighted by the memorable homily delivered by Andrew's hometown pastor. She had instructed the bride and groom to each write a letter explaining why they loved their partner, and then read the responses directly. Those letters were full of amazing things. It was an incredibly special moment, and it actually made me pause the dots-to-dots game I was playing with Ryan.

Cornell University in Ithaca, NY is a beautiful campus.

We visited two college campuses on our trip. Notre Dame in South Bend, IN - coincidentally, Lauren's alma mater - had a very large and beautiful campus, but since school was already out for the summer, it was deceptively quiet. Cornell, however, is amazing. The campus is situated on top of a tall hill overlooking Ithaca and Cayuga Lake and has a series of waterfalls snaking down the middle. Amelia Greiner, as a Cornell alum, was our excellent tour guide, and it was great to see her, especially following her recent engagement. Next year's vacation, perhaps?

The Maid of the Mist boat tour is totally worth it.

Remember the wedding episode of The Office where Jim and Pam are married on a boat at Niagara Falls? That was a Maid of the Mist boat, and it is really fun. All that water is crashing around you, you're soaked, and you can't see anything, but you also can't stop laughing. The free ponchos help.

Everyone needs to visit Niagara-On-The-Lake.

It is a quaint, very Stillwater-esque town in the heart of the best wine-making region in Canada, and it is awesome. It was here we learned about ice wine. Ice wine is this crazy dessert wine produced by leaving grapes on the vine until January. The growers wait until there are three nights in a row of below-freezing temperatures and then hand-pick the grapes in the middle of the night. Inside each grape is a drop of concentrated juice which makes a sweet and delicious wine. Obviously, this stuff is expensive, but we went to plenty of tastings and made the most of the experience. All the other Canadian wines were mostly complimentary to taste, and they were also quite good. If I could only choose one place to visit again, it would be this region.

Poutine is french fries, topped with cheese curds, and covered with gravy.

Apparently, everyone in Canada knows what poutine is, but no one in America does. Seriously, ask around. It was everywhere up there. After much head-scratching about the dish, we were able to find some high-end poutine thanks to a tip from our concierge. Thankfully, we didn't have to get it at KFC. I'm honestly surprised that we don't have this dish at home, especially with our close proximity to Wisconsin. At the very least, this should be a State Fair staple.

The CN Tower in Toronto is too expensive.

We paid $23 each to ride to the top of the Western Hemisphere's tallest tower and one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. We enjoyed ourselves and had fun sitting on the glass floors, but probably not $23 of fun.

Toronto is a great place to hang out, but not much of a tourist town.

We kind of ran out of things to do in Toronto. For being Canada's largest city, we expected things to be closer together and a little more touristy, but it is really more of a residential town. There were cool places to eat and neat neighborhoods, but those are hard to explore in two days when you are walking everywhere. I suppose it's like Minneapolis that way.

Killarney Provincial Park is far off the beaten path, but that's a good thing.

We took a bit of a risk on our trip by not reserving a campsite in Canada. It turned out to be no problem at all. There were probably 10 other people camping in the park from among 170 sites, and no one in our radio-free section at all. A black bear that crossed our path caused Nicole a little concern at night, but otherwise it was gorgeous. The black flies were supposedly low for the season, but we did get hit with some nasty mosquitoes. Fun Fact: Black flies are an indicator of unpolluted waters.

The Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie have been in operation since 1855.

Who knew?

Mackinac Island, MI is as great as everyone says it is.

It is an island in Lake Huron where no cars allowed, fudge is made in bulk, and is covered with adorable sights. We thought the island would have been expensive and cheesy, but it is actually a really cool place. I think most of the children of Michigan were there on a field trip the day we visited, but the island was big enough for us to find quiet places.

Nicole will take pictures of any flowers.

Half the pictures of our trip are flowers, and not necessarily rare or unique flowers. Sometimes they were flowers that we already had in our yard at home. I don't get it.

If you're interested, you can click here for pictures of our trip. All the pictures of our trip, just so you know what you're getting into.

(Uploading is still in process, so you early readers should come back later for the rest of the story!)