Onto Ontario

This summer, my parents and I went to Canada on the way to Church of the Brethren Annual Conference in Grand Rapids, MI (more on that in a later post).

We left early one morning and drove part way to Canada. Our first stop was in Williamsport, PA to go to the Little League World Series Museum. I am not one to usually enjoy spending a ton of time in museums, especially one about baseball, but I actually really enjoyed it. Part of my enjoyment may have come from the interactive parts (that I rushed to and then hurried my parents along to get to them as well). There was a part where you tried to "catch" hits, another part where you tested how high you could jump to catch a ball, and my personal favorite, seeing how fast you could run to first base. We then went to walk around the Little League stadium before getting back on the road to our hotel for the night.

The next day we got up early to make it across the boarder to Canada in good time. It ended up being a very quick trip across the boarder, though they did not stamp our passports which was a little sad. Did you really go to that country if they didn't stamp your passport? Once we were in Canada we drove to Niagara Falls and took some pictures of the falls before getting tickets to take the boat ride to the falls. We got our tickets at just the right time because we walked right onto the boat, and the boat was fairly empty, everyone could stand along the side if they wanted to. I was the designated photo taker of the family, so I took a TON of pictures until we got close enough to the falls that we were really getting sprayed.

After the boat ride we walked the whole way along the falls to get to the Power Station Museum. As part of the museum you can walk underground the whole way to the falls. It was a pretty long walk, but we were almost standing right at the water level and could look up to see the falls. We then spent a bit more time walking around the museum, which I went really quickly through while my dad read everything. While we were there they did a demonstration of Tesla's coils, and we got to hear two songs played by the electrical coils. I still have no clue how that actually works, but it was pretty awesome to watch and hear.

On the rest of our trip we went to the Welland Canal Locks, which doesn't exactly sound all that exciting, but it was one of my favorite parts of the trip. We were spent a decent part of the afternoon watching an online map of boats moving through the canal and driving to each new lock to watch it go through. It took me way longer than I want to admit to understand how the locks worked. We also went go-carting. It was not quite like Mario Cart, but close. I had the slowest go-cart so my parents kept lapping me, which made excited them. Pretty close to the end of our time there I started to get the hang of how to steer and accelerate without feeling like I was going to fall out or end up on the grass.

Some other highlights of the trip involve food. We had to try some Canadian fast food (obviously). We went to A&W Canada and saw the Burger Family, we went to a streetside farmers market and got the best raspberries I have ever had in my life, Harvey's (which was a fast food burger place, but like Subway where you go down a line and pick your toppings) and also Tim Hortons. I learned that I absolutely love poutine and I think that is how I want to eat my potatoes this Thanksgiving. (The only problem being that there are cheese curds on poutine, and dairy makes me sick.)

And one last little highlight from our Canada trip, that only some of you will find interesting...at a museum we went to that was part of the Welland Canal lookout deck, there was a display on the movie A Christmas Story. The scene with the tongue stuck on the pole is filmed at a school that once was in Canada. Of course my dad and I found that fascinating, since we watch that movie every year on Christmas Day, and we naturally had to take a picture to send to my uncle who also is a fan of the movie.