Bluebird's Nest

Yay! We’re back on Canadian soil!!! Pretty happy to land back in my home country for some reason. I’m not even a big fan of Timmy Ho’s but we even made a stop there today. Oh and we almost stopped at Canadian Tire to pick up a new camp stove (our old one was leaking propane and it actually made a big fire show when my hubby tried to light it this morning to have our morning coffee. It’s awfully Canadian of us.

So happy to be back to regular cream in my coffee, not the powdered crap. What’s up with that anyway? I don’t understand why they don’t have normal cream in their coffee. Gross. Hopefully no American’s are offended when they read that.

So after a chilly night of camping in Higgins Lake we packed up and had a big long day of driving ahead of us. The nice thing is that the long days of driving are behind us and now we get to see the sights. We really wanted to make it to the East Coast to see all it had to offer and I think there’s a bunch of things to see over here

We passed the blue blue waters of Lake Huron today. I’m really suprised by how blue the water has been in all the Great Lakes we have passed. I’ve seen some nasty documentaries about how polluted some of the lakes are and it’s just not evident in the colour of lake that’s for sure.

We stopped for food at a Subway today while we were still in the States. I don’t know if they have these kinds of sandwiches in Canada but the have a turkey, bacon, avocado sandwich there and it’s oh so yummy. Had to try it.

We headed over the bridge back into Canada and stopped on the other side to give the wee babe a bit of a grass break. Like I said, it was a big long drive today. One mistake we made was thinking it would be easy to find camping on a Saturday no problem.

I was a little at my wits end as everything seemed to be full and we were so looking forward to staying put in one place for 3 days before seeing Allison in Ottawa (that’s right, we’re almost there girlfriend!!) so we were a little dissapointed that we couldn’t find anything. Finally we found something with a pool, grass, a little store, bathrooms, free showers but it’s unfortunately beside the highway. Sigh…

I think we’ll still park ourselves here for a few days just to be able to stop and relax rather than packing up again. The mozzies aren’t too bad.

Tomorrow we head out for a short day to Niagara Falls, probably a swim in the pool, and some relaxing by the fire but first we’ll start the day with a big breakfast.

I’m back in WIFI/network range again. Gawd it feels good !! No photos today. No time.

EXPENSES:

Camping: $32
Wee babe disposition: Pretty good. A couple of times it was hard to get her to go to sleep and at the end she had had enough. Long day of driving. Lot’s of Baby Beluga.
Weather: 28 degrees average, sunny with puffy clouds.
Stress level: Pretty even keel except for when the wee babe decided that she’d had enough and we weren’t ready to stop.

This sticker business is getting really ridiculous. We’ve found 1 in the last 9 days. We’ve been looking but obviously not in the right spots. Where is a good place to find a bumper sticker to put on our Thule? We’ve been looking in gift shops, hotels, tourist info stops, dollar stores… I guess either they aren’t making them anymore or we just really suck at finding them. My aspirations were to have our Thule box covered in stickers by the time we get to the East Coast but I’m not sure it’s going to happen at this rate. Any advice on where to look is appreciated.

After I wrote this we went sticker crazy and found 4!! Maybe I’m not cursed after all.

Today was one of the best days by far so far. Lots of lake time even with the 4 hour drive. I’m sure that there’s going to be more that will top it but after all the driving, it’s been a treat.

We woke up in the morning and partook of the super continental breakfast. We hit the road and stopped off at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to get some white sand time and blue blue Lake Superior water. The wind was warm and the sun was shining.

I’ve realized that most of our days are filled with finding food. What’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner and how can we do it on the cheap and are we too tired to pull out the camp stove or make sandwiches? Do we even have time? It’s amazing how much time it takes to get 4 people to eat for a meal. Even the wee babe needs some boob milk.

Speaking of the wee babe, I made a mix on iTunes for her with Raffi and various other artists. She still loves Baby Beluga. Like in a baaaaaaad way.

Back to the day at hand. So after the trip to the beach (which my tweenager didn’t want to leave and get in the car), and the foot spa from the sand, and after seeing the huge weird birds with the clear clear sky, it was a late start but well worth it.

Along our travels today, we actually saw vultures on the side of the road snacking on something. Eeeew…

We stopped for yet another meal in St. Ignes for groceries and lunch by the lake for all of us to dip our feet in Lake Michigan (the wee babe dipped a bit more than her feet but I won’t dwell on this story at this point).  Again, we were blessed with the blue blue water of Lake Michigan and picture perfect weather.

At some point we passed over the huge lake that crosses between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan and also the 45 parallel that meets exactly between the equator and the North Pole.

We got back into the car and finally ended at Higgins Lake, which is much more populated than any other camping we’ve been apart of yet. I guess it makes sense since it is Friday night.

After we set up camp we put on our wet bathing suits from the night before and headed to the lake. It was warm and beautiful. There’s nothing that beats a 5pm swim. The wee babe thought it was too cold and cried a bit but the rest of us had a blast and cooled off.

We came back to the camp and cooked dinner (white fish, soup and quinoa), which my hubby thinks is probably the healthiest dinner in the campground tonight.

We’re resting beside the 5$ fire right now listening to the neighbours. Tomorrow we have plans to stop and do some shopping before getting back into Canada. I can’t wait to be back in Canada for some reason. I like it here; it’s just not my own country.

It’s 10:15pm and I’m still in a t-shirt and shorts. The mosquitoes are at about a 2 on my personal scale. Just enough to be annoying.

EXPENSES:

Camping: $27
Wee babe disposition: Slept a lot. Hopefully that won’t bite me in the ass tonight.
Weather: 25 degrees average, sunny with puffy clouds.
weird heron emu type birds, and I swear I saw a dead porcupine on the road
Stress level: Pretty even keel. It was pretty stress when the baby slide into the lake.

Yesterday was the fourth of July so last night the tweenager and my hubby set off some fireworks in honour of us being in the States. I had a wonderful bath. Glorious.

My hubby didn’t sleep very well, for me not too bad. The wee babe woke up 2 times in the night.

Today we did a detour due to all the flooding in North Dakota. It was a little nerve racking for me but it went really well. Took us a little extra time but it all ended up well in the end.

The scenery was stunning as usual. I love the rolling hills and blue blue open skies. We came across a field of white windmills. It was really beautiful against the wide open spaces.

We played a game of name that tune. We each took turns humming a song. It had me in stitches as people sound pretty funny when they are trying to hum a song and my hubby was the most hilarious.

Have you ever noticed that in almost every small town there is a “Main Street”? Instead of looking around for grocery stores now, we just look around for Main Street and you can find almost everything you need there.

We stopped for a break in Drake next to a really quaint little park to have some fruit, a cookie and a granola bar. The wee babe took a stretch. We got some cute photos.

We also stopped in Rugby to grab some food for lunch and dinner and then went to a campground where there was a picnic table for us to make sandwiches. There was this really strange field of school buses there too. Like lots of them. Kinda strange.

We also stopped in Devil’s Lake for some coffee treats.

There were two campgrounds that the hubby had sussed out but they were an hour apart. We went to the first one and it was really nice. But a lot of mosquitoes and the tweenager is suffering big time. So we persevered on to the next place here in Red Lake Falls and I’m so glad we did. Again, there’s no one even close to us, we pretty much have the place to ourselves. We’re right on the river, it’s grass with a fire pit. NO MOSQUITOES!!!

We picked up our first sticker today at the campground in Wisconsin!! We missed a sticker in North Dakota again (mom and Aunty, help us out if you happen to go this way).

We made steak and corn and then started a fire. The wee babe went to sleep and now we’re reflecting on our day. I think we’re finally settling into road tripping and enjoying the great outdoors.  It’s nice to hear about how the tweenager is final gets what my hubby and I were trying to tell her before we left on how wonderful it will be to hit the open road just trying to figure out where we will be staying and what we will be doing every day.

I’m lacking some serious internet connection here being in the States it’s too expensive to tether so we’ve been having to stop in at tourist info centre’s to check out maps and such.

EXPENSES:

Camping: $23
Wee babe disposition: Great! Loves being outside.
Weather: 27 degrees average
Items lost: blanket
Stress level: Vunderbar! Minus 50% when finding the camp ground (I was so peaceful and happy). 2-3% overall

Not quite such an epic drive today, which was really nice.

We hit the wide open road around 9:30am after a wonderful coffee and some granola. Thanks again Lyndsey for hosting us.

The prairies were BEAUTIFUL. Absolutely stunning. Rolling green hills winding through yellow canola fields. Simply breathtaking.

For the first part of the drive the hubby was driving and we got the play by play every time there was a silo, gopher, pebble… tres annoying – sorry honey

He got all excited when there was an odometer test section. No joke. So excited. We stopped in Medicine Hat and changed another diaper explosion and got some groceries. I guess we took the first exit as the place we ended up was straight out of the 70’s. After driving a little more through the town it’s actually quite nice and modern.

The drive was fairly uneventful save for the gopher who decided it was his time and committed suicide. Poor thing. We also couldn’t find a sticker in Alberta for the Thule so any Albertan’s that read this blog, could you please send me an Alberta sticker? Pretty please?

We also had many rounds of “Baby Beluga” which seems to shut up the wee babe (she made it just shy of our destination).

Around 5ish we rolled into Morse (a tiny tiny town) and decided to check out the local motel to see about price. It looked straight out of a Hitchcock movie. I walked into the lobby and it smelt stale (like dead body). The woman came out to greet me and I think she was in her pj’s. No kidding. No room for us (thank god).

We eventually found the campground there. No one else was there. It was quite nice with grass and a clean washroom/shower facility. This was going to be our first night camping.

We pitched a tent and then the black looming clouds started to roll in. It was humid as hell. There were mosquitoes like I’ve never experienced before. The were ravenous.

The hubby started up the pasta and the tweenager and I set up the tent. I was happy to be away from the mozzies.

We ate (I was in the tent with the wee babe) and afterwards they cleaned up and just in the nic of time we succumbed to a pounding shower, rumbling thunder and lightening.

For whatever reason, I decided that I needed to go to the bathroom while we were hunkered down and I made a break for it. The ten second run and I was DRENCHED. I don’t think I’ve experienced anything like that before except for maybe in Bali.

The rains lasted for maybe and hour and then it cooled down. We had showers and were in bed by probably 9ish.

It was cool during the night but not too bad. It was the trains that were about 50 feet from our tent that woke us up. The literally sounded the whistle right at the campground. The earth shook. It was pretty cool for one night, I wouldn’t want to do that again though J

The baby slept and slept. She woke up once when the tweenager got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night but I just hugged her and she fell back asleep. Awesome. I really can’t believe that she slept through every single train whistle.

Proud mama.

EXPENSES:

Camping Fee: $15
Wee babe disposition: pretty stellar save for the last half hour of howling.
Wildlife seen: gophers
Weather: HOT – 33 degrees average
Things that have already broken: cable for the iphone

I’ve been thinking about how I could capture the wee babes cute sounds and then post to the blog. For privacy reasons, I’m just not ready to post video of her (even though I’ve posted a couple of photos throughout the site) or my tweenager but audio doesn’t seem to bother me.

If a video blog is called a vlog then shouldn’t a podcast blog be called a plog?

Anyway, I’m trying something new, I’m using the Cincopa Rich Media Plugin with allows you to create galleries of photos, music, podcasts and video. In order to get the podcast happening, I needed to download software that would record my voice, Audacity, and then an mp3 converter. All the information was on this page. It was quite simple to figure out after I did some research with the babe on my hip. (I first turned to the App Store and downloaded 2 free voice recording apps but neither worked well as they saved in formats that weren’t compatible.)

Without further adieu, here is the wee babe’s first plog.

Warning: this could be giggle forming.