Road Trip Adventures - Day 2

We were able to get out of Duluth fairly quickly this morning, not alot of traffic to deal with on a Saturday morning.  The terrain became much more hilly and the forests denser as we head East along the number 2.  We decided to cut an hour of our original route (thanks to Google for letting us know about this) and took the 28 along the shore line of Lake Superior.  I find it hilarious that these quaint little towns all seem to have a claim to fame landmark, like the Giant Ox in Bemidji Minnesota, or others like the largest running chain saw in the world, the largest hat, the largest Santa, etc.  I can't count how many we passed these past two days.

After two Barbie movies, 3 pages of picture find, 10 games of eye spy, we stopped for lunch in Bruce Crossing, a town of 600 people.  The food was delicious and the waitress very pleasant. A quick walk with the dog and we were back on the road.  One thing we didn't take into consideration was that we jumped ahead one hour as we passed into a different time zone.  We didn't arrive at our destination until after 7 p.m. 

The weather improved as we drew closer to Mackinaw City though and by the time we arrived it was a beautiful sunny evening!  After spending a few minutes tracking my reservation down (they accidentally made it for September not June) they found us a lovely room on the second floor over looking the lake.  The Days Inn Lakeside is nice enough, great location, close to the main street which is so pretty.  The rate is $150 for the night, again they allow dogs, we have a balcony overlooking the water and this too will provide a complimentary breakfast in the morning.  I just wish we could spend more time here as we really didn't get the chance to see it all and it really has a lot of charm.  We walked two blocks to a great little Italian Restaurant called Nonna Lisa's where I had a gigantic bowl of Fettuccine Alfredo for $15.99.  Wish I could have ordered half but it was very good none the less.  I also was delighted to find out the adjoining coffee shop serves Starbucks!  Guess where we are stopping before we begin our final leg of this fun-filled road trip to Sarnia?

We will continue on in Sarnia tomorrow night!

Day 1- Head Out on the Highway...Lookin for Adventure

I was magically transported back to my childhood as we packed the van and headed down Highway 59 into the good ol' US of A.  The only thing missing was my older brother tormenting me in the back seat and my mother threatening both of us that she was about to "turn this car around" and the vacation would be over before it began.  But I did always love our family road trips over the border growing up and was excited as my family now departed for our first 3 day driving trek to Sarnia Ontario. 

It is so remarkably easy now to plan your route and I am at a loss as to how we use to do this pre- Google.  When I first began planning this a few weeks ago, I used Google Maps to plan the easiest and quickest driving route and then evenly distributing this route over three days was able to decide which towns we would be staying in each night. Duluth, Minnesota was a our first over night stay and again using Google I was able to find a decent and cheap hotel with an amazing water park for only $124 CAD (at par) for the night and they allow dogs (as most hotels do down here).  The Edgewater Hotel and Waterpark was everything we needed to keep us entertained for an evening. That low nightly rate included entrance to the waterpark, discount coupon for dinner by the pool (pizza) and a lovely continental breakfast the following morning.  Duluth is not the prettiest town I've ever passed through but it was pleasant and the people were friendly.  Traffic was a bit of a nightmare as it seems every bridge and street we needed to take was under construction and we felt like we were in a maze at time! 

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was a delightful coffee shop directly across from the Edgewater Hotel called Dunns Bros Coffee.  Day two began with a delicious Decaf Caramel Machiato to take with me on the road as we head to our next stop, Mackinaw City, Michigan.

Stay tuned for more for road trip adventures!