Friday, June 23, 2023. Apparently, tucking the sheet between mattresses worked because both girls slept in late; I actually had to wake them up! Our day started with ginormous banana crepes for the girls and blue crab eggs Benedict’s for the adults at OEB Breakfast Co. TOTALLY worth the stop if you are ever in the area!

After breakfast, we went up the road to explore Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. The Capilano bridge is about 40 billion meters long and built in 1920 for the express desire to get to the other side. Then, in 1921, the Capilano family started promoting the bridge as a tourist attraction. (This entire paragraph needs to be fact checked before publication.)

Editor’s note: The original bridge was built in 1889, tourist attraction promotion began in 1953, and the current bridge was totally rebuilt in 1956. It is 450 feet long.

Wisely, Carson had purchased our entry tickets ahead of time, so we were able to skip the line and go right in. Just inside gates there was the gift shop and a cafe. After winding through their informational signage and some totem poles, we got to cross The Capilano Suspension Bridge. Despite its length, bounce, and sway, this is a very strong bridge. So strong in fact that back in 2006 a bad snow storm knocked a 17+ ton tree across the bridge causing no real damage to the bridge. (Editor’s note: These facts are accurate!)

Ellie was a little nervous at first but quickly started to enjoy the crossing. Mackenzie, on the other hand, wanted to get off of it even before we got on. But to her credit, she went all the way across without much issue.

Once on the other side we started exploring the boardwalks through the lower portion of the rainforest. Oh my these must have been a lot of work to build and have been meticulously maintained. Along the boardwalk there were informational signs teaching us about this micro biome. We also happened across three ornithologists displaying a hawk and an owl.

After we made it out of the boardwalks, we picked up a couple of Rainforest Explorer booklets as we made our way up to the Treetops Adventure (suspension bridges through the rainforest’s canopy). The booklets included activities for six different stations across the suspension bridges and lower boardwalks asking the explorer to answer questions, solve problems, and make some observations. This booklet mission kept the girls preoccupied and helped to settle Mackenzie’s nervousness with the heights. Then, once completed, they turned in their booklets for recyclable bracelets made with seeded paper to plant later.

The Treetops Adventure was very fun! It’s not everyday that you have the opportunity to walk through a canopy. Along with enjoying the views and the experience, we marveled at the engineering that it has taken to build such an experience without causing harm to the trees and surrounding environment.

Like most things, our time in the canopy and the park had to come to an end. But first we had to get back across The Capilano Suspension Bridge. This time, we gave Mackenzie the binoculars as we crossed and she had no hesitations. Then we passed through the gift shop and were off to lunch.

We had lunch at La Taqueria Pinche Taco Shop. This, like most really good local joints, felt like a random eatery in an industrial park. And it was not a let down! I don’t remember what all we ordered but it was all nummy.

After lunch, we had some unaccounted for time, so we found a playground nearby for the girls to play while Carson wandered around the neighborhood attempting a couple geocaches. Some days geocaching is kinda like fishing, it’s about the adventure and not always the results. Right??? Anyhoo…

Once we had all regrouped, we headed down to Granville for our next adventure: a boat tour of Vancouver. We arrived at Prince of Whales right on time but were delayed a bit by a group of passengers that were running late. After that was all straightened out, our group of ten headed down to the docks to load up. Our arrival at the boat was greeted by one of three sisters hoping that we would have scraps to share. She was disappointed. 

Our boat was a small rubber zodiac, slightly larger than a dingy. As we disembarked from the docks, we made our way out of the inlet, past tankers, around Stanley Park, through the shipping lanes, past mountains of sulfur at the Port of Vancouver, and made our turn around at the hydroplane runway. The tour was fine, but the most fun was watching the planes takeoff over our heads and when our guide cranked the boat to full speed. 

Our high adrenaline day ended with steaks at Earl’s. (Sorry, no pics this time.)

Thursday, June 22, 2023. Despite attempting to sleep in a little bit, I was still up at 6. The train was due into Vancouver by 9. So, instead of doing a full scheduled sit-down breakfast, they offered the option of a basic continental breakfast in the Skyline car with croissants, muffins, fruit, juice, and coffee or a sit-down breakfast with a smaller menu that typical and would be first come first served with a waitlist if all tables were full. These breakfasts would be served starting at 6:30. 

We let the girls sleep a little longer and headed down for breakfast around 7. When we got there, the dining car was full so we added our names to the list and went to the Skyline car to wait. 

While waiting, we pulled into the station ahead of schedule. And because we were early, the station wasn’t staffed to let the passengers off, so we would need to wait until 9 to start disembarking. That was fine, we still needed to eat!

After 30+ minutes of waiting, the dining car finally radioed the Skyline car that they had room for 18 more diners; that was the rest of everyone waiting. Come to find out, several people removed their names from the list when we pulled into the station, so there were 12 of us left to eat.  We went down and ordered. While we waited for our food, the doors opened and we were being let free 🙂 Despite the more limited menu, breakfast was just as good as the other meals had been. We finished up, went back to our berth to get our bags, and stepped off the train for the last time. 

From here, we went inside, waited longer than reasonable for our larger stowed bags to make their way onto the carrousel. With all of our bags in hand, we took two SkyTrains (Pro Tip: the SkyTrain is partially a subway) and hiked through the airport to pick up our rental car. Now, the ultimate question: where to? 

Now that we finally have nice, warm, dry day, we decided to head over to Stanley Park. We found a parking spot behind the aquarium and started our journey to find a playground. And of course, on the way over we found a couple more caches. As we got closer to our destination, Carson went left for a couple more caches and I took the girls right to find this elusive playground. 

Mission accomplished; we found the playground. So, the girls played for a bit until Carson found us. At this point, we headed over to the concession stand behind the pool for lunch (burgers, chicken tenders, Korean corn dog, and fries…lots of fries.) After lunch, we all got salted caramel gelato cones and headed down to the beach for the girls to dip their toes in the water. Then, we started walking back towards the aquarium.

We made it to the aquarium at 3:30 and it closed at 5:00. So, just enough time to speed through it! This was a fairly small aquarium compared to what we are used to seeing, but it was pretty nice. The most exciting exhibits were outside; urchin and starfish petting, harbor seals, otters, and sea lions.

Before we left the park, there were still two things that we needed to do. First, we ventured over to explore the long retired polar bear and grizzly bear enclosures…and find the cache. The last thing we did as we left the park was to drive the outer loop of the park to complete a five stage Adventure Lab that toured the park and provided the location for a bonus geocache final. Given the size of this park we had no desire today to walk this entire route. So instead, I drove while Carson hopped out to complete each stage. 

After wrapping up our time at Stanley Park, we made our way towards our condo. On the way, we stopped at a very authentic Chinese restaurant. This was a small place with eight tables and a menu with mostly unfamiliar options. Carson ordered a sweet chili chicken, I had sweet spare ribs, and the girls had shrimp fried rice. We weren’t very adventurous, but it was really good.

FINALLY! We made our way to our condo. We had strategically picked dinner because it was just a few blocks away; I think it took longer to find the address than to actually get to it. 🙂

For this part of the trip, we stayed in the basement of a private home with private access, with two bedrooms, one full bathroom, kitchen, and living room. The girls were back to sharing a bed, but this time their bed was European with two twin-ish sized mattresses with two sets of sheets and blankets. So, I tucked their top sheets into the crack between the mattresses in an attempt to contain Ellie while she slept. Then, Carson and I took the king sized bed and both slept blissfully unaware that there was even another person in the bed.

Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Despite all of the rain and snow yesterday, today started cloudy but was suppose to start clearing up by mid-morning. So after breakfast from the cafe in front of our hotel (yogurt with fruit and nut toppings, pancakes, salmon BLT sandwich, and an apple cinnamon muffin) we headed out for the Jasper Skytram on Whistler’s Mountain. 

The drive up to the base was pretty sad. The road was covered in leaves and the sides were lined with broken trees; yesterday’s storm was very hard on the vegetation in this area.

Once we made it to the base station, we had a short wait until it was our turn to ride. We boarded the gondola with 17 of our closest friends and began our ride up the cable. Ellie was a bit nervous at first but she relaxed as we progressed up; Mackenzie white-knuckled the entire 7 minute ride.

At the top they had a small gift shop, a restaurant upstairs, and a boardwalk around the building. Because of the snow yesterday, they were still clearing the boardwalk and even had a section blocked off due to the drifts over hanging to roof and ice cycles on the eaves. Therefore, we did not get to enjoy the full panorama of the area, but the clouds were lifting and  what we did get enjoy was beautiful. 

We gave the girls our phones to take pictures and they seemed to enjoy the trip back down.

Back at the bottom, we loaded in the car and started heading back down the hill on our way to Maligne Canyon (which we just learned is pronounced ma-leen, rhymes with clean). A few curves out of the parking lot and I remember that we wanted to try for a cache back there. So, Carson made a u-turn and we headed back up. Just inside the parking lot entrance was a large bolder behind some trees. Supposedly there was a cache in one of these trees. We couldn’t find it. So, we left and started back down the hill again. This time, we made it all the way to the bottom and were able to continue on our original trajectory. 

The road to Maligne Canyon was pretty clear but every road off of the main route was closed due to downed trees. Once at the main lodge, the parking lot was an absolute mess. As with all snow covered lots, people were parking with way too much space between the cars resulting in the popular locale filling up faster than normal. So, we had to make our own space along a curb. Thankfully, we were all wearing our hiking boots so we all had dry socks despite the sloshy lot and trails.

I wrote the rest of this post before the canyon part, and now I feel like it’s too long. So Carson’s going to cover that in a separate post.

After the canyon, we headed back into Jasper for lunch at 1pm. Then, back to the hotel to change into our swimsuits for RAFTING! Yeah, we finally got to go white water rafting! But first, we had to walk twelve minutes down the road from our hotel to meet up with the bus. Again, we were back on a yellow school bus, but this one was half full of wet suits and other gear, and pulling a trailer with three rafts on it. 

As we pulled out of the parking lot, one of our guides explained the gear we were going to put on: we started with socks they provide (these were simply to make it easier to take of the shoes we were going to wear), our wet suits, water shoes/booty things, and because it is still cooler than comfortable they also gave us each a jacket to keep the river water off our arms. We were also informed that we would not need helmets as these were class II rapids and did not warrant such safety measures. After the explanation of everything, another guide started taking sizes and passing out our gear, and we started dressing while the bus kept going.

After a short drive, we pulled into a small parking lot at our put-in point, unloaded, and received a quick safety training on how to get in and out of the raft, how to hold your paddle, and what to do if you or someone else or your guide fell out of the raft. Now time for the fun!

We split into two rafts: the four of us plus our guide in one, and the other four guests (a young couple and a mom & her son) plus their guide in the other raft. Meanwhile, the third guide would be hanging back on shore to take pics as we rafted down the river. In our raft, we started with me and Mackenzie in the from with Ellie behind me and Carson behind Mackenzie, and our guide bringing up the rear.

The other group put-in first. Once they were a couple minutes down stream, we put-in and began our journey. 

The first little bit was pretty smooth; mostly just getting use to the paddle and strokes. From there, we went through a few pretty good rapids; getting some good air time and moderately wet along the way. 

About two thirds of the way through, Ellie wanted to get wet, so Mackenzie and Ellie traded places. We then went through one more pretty long stretch of rapids. Unfortunately for Ellie, our timing and bounces got us in the air pretty good, but not much splashing. 

Back at the bus, we pulled the raft out of the water and drained it. Then, we sat on the trailer and removed all of our gear and got back on board.

All in all, the fun lasted about 45 minutes, and we all had an absolute blast! This was just the right amount of thrill with a bit of breaks in between. We will defiantly have to do this again sometime!

Monday, June 19, 2023. After a pretty decent night’s sleep, we all rolled out of bed around 7:00am MDT. Carson and I got everything packed up while the girls did…stuff. While we packed, we discussed our plans for today: we would start by grabbing some Adventure Labs around Banff, then head back north up highway 93 a.k.a. the Icefields Parkway, stopping at Sunwapta Falls on the way, and plan to wrap up the day with whitewater rafting at 3:30 in Jasper.

Well, as plans go, we learned pretty quickly that we would need to be flexible. Per the usual on this leg of the trip, the morning started out cold and rainy. We drove around Banff grabbing several ALs, got breakfast at McDonalds (because it was quick), topped off the car with gas, and headed out of town. But hang on, we needed one more quick stop at the sign leading into town.

THEN, we were finally on our way out of town. A little ways down the road, we approached the gate into Banff National Park and noticed there was a pretty long queue trying to get in. There was also a sign that said “Current Winter Driving Conditions” with the lights for Poor lit up. What’s that about? It also looked like every single car was stopping at the little hut to talk. This is gonna take a while… 

Finally our turn came around! We already had our pass and should have been able to breeze right through. But something just felt amiss, so I rolled my window down to have my turn chatting with the attendant. She informed us that it was snowing at the higher elevations and although the route to Jasper was currently passable, travel was not recommended. OK, so the sign was legit. 😕 Well, we needed to get to the other side of the icefields, so we decided to take our chances and went for it anyway. 

With the temp hovering around 3° C, the first several kilometers was all just rain. As we climbed higher though, the temp dropped to 2° C and the snow started falling. Given our current speed at the time and the fact that we still wanted to make it back to Jasper for rafting, we decided to skip Sunwapta Falls. A few kilometers farther and the temp dropped to 1° C and the snow had started to accumulate on the roads. Because of the warm temperatures and preceding rainfall, this was a very heavy, wet snow About an hour past the park entrance, the trees started to sag under the weight of the unseasonal snow. About an hour after that the temp was down to 0° C, visibility coming and going, and road conditions getting worse we passed the Columbia Icefields parking area and restaurant. This was the first time that we debated whether we should stop for a break or keep going. We knew there were large mountains in front of us, but all we could see was white. In good weather, we would have been about an hour from Jasper but this weather was making the roads questionable and the inexperienced camper drivers were making this trek even more treacherous. The storm had no intention of stopping any time soon, so we opted to keep going.

At one point I made the comment, “At least we get to experience all the seasons of Canada.” Mackenzie immediately replied, “Except the good ones.”

Ten minutes beyond the restaurant, northbound traffic came to a complete stop. Oncoming traffic appeared to be a bit snarled and very slow just up ahead for no reason we could see. As the lead car to the oncoming traffic got closer it became obvious that they were stopping to talk with every vehicle in our lane. Suspiciously, the vehicles in our lane that the car had passed started to turn around??? When the lead car got to us, they informed us that there were multiple campers stuck at the top of the pass completely blocking both lanes of traffic. Oh boy. So, we joined the procession and turned around in bumper to bumper traffic on the snow covered highway to head back to the restaurant to regroup.

We got parked and headed inside. While we stood around trying to get our bearings, Carson joined their Wi-Fi and promptly received a voicemail notification from the rafting tour company. They wanted to know if we still wanted to keep on schedule with our tour at 3:30 or reschedule. While Carson was listening to the VM, the Icefields Center made an announcement that the remainder of their tours for the day were cancelled; the roads, trails, and tour locations were too dangerous to go. 

At this point, it was about noon. So we headed to the restaurant upstairs, planning to call them back after we ate. Lunch was an overpriced buffet of fish sticks for the girls and cold brisket for Carson and me, but their dessert lineup was worth it: doughnut holes with honey drizzle, cream puffs, strawberry shortcake, butter tarts (a Canadian specialty!), and some layered chocolate bar thing. (Carson says they were Nanaimo bars. He wasn’t a fan, but I liked them.)

While we were eating, Carson got another call from the rafting tour company. As they talked, they agreed it would be best to move our rating to the next day at the same time. OK, one fewer thing to worry about today.

Throughout lunch, I was paying attention to the traffic patterns in front of the restaurant. As we were wrapping up, there was quite a bit of traffic coming down the hill indicating that whatever had stopped traffic before had cleared up and things were moving again, and the snow appeared to be letting up just a bit. So we got in the car and started out again.

On our way out of the parking lot, Carson stopped a couple coming into the restaurant to ask what direction they had just come from. They had just come down the mountain from the direction we needed to go and said that they were delayed a couple of hours but traffic was moving through that pass again. So, we should be good to go. Now with a bit more confidence, we got back on the highway and kept going.

We quickly made it past our original turnaround point and were able to keep going this time without issue. It was slow going for the first 20 minutes or so, but we made it over the pass and started down the other side. From here on, as we started to drop in elevation the temperature started to go up and the precipitation bounced between snow and rain. All things considered, it was pretty easy driving the rest of the way into Jasper.

We pulled into Jasper around 3:45, but it was too early to check into our hotel. So to kill some time, I had Carson pull over at the Jasper town sign for a geocache and our second sign pic of the day. Since it was still raining pretty hard, I was planning to get out for this cache on my own. But as I headed down the slope, Carson and Mackenzie were right behind me. It took a few minutes longer that I’d have liked, but we found the container, took our picture, and were back in the car in 5 minutes. 

Welp, since we were all pretty wet and we still had a few minutes left, we went for a couple more. 🙂 The damage that the snow was causing was pretty visible at our 3rd (and final) cache of this run; with significant broken limbs and branches near the find. 🙁

We finally made it to our hotel around 4:30pm. We unloaded the car, I pulled together all of our dirty clothes, and we headed out to dinner at Something Else Restaurant. They had a pretty wide variety on the menu, but Carson and I settled on Greek souvlaki (one lamb and one chicken). Carson dropped me off at the laundromat and took the girls back to the hotel to swim. Approximately an hour and a half later, I texted him that I was done and he swung back over to pick me up. 

After some quick showers, we were all off to bed.

Friday, June 16, 2023. Good news: The earplugs helped! Bad news: I was woken up out of my doze at about 11pm by Mackenzie shaking me to indicate that she was going to puke! Boy, that killed any sleepy vibes that were settling in! Thankfully, our berths are right beside the bathrooms and I was able to get  her into the bathroom far enough that she at least made it to the sink. After loosing all of her dinner, I was able to get her and the bathroom all cleaned up, and left her sitting on a stool in the bathroom hugging a trash can while I hunted down some saltines. Thankfully, some of the staff was still sitting up in the dining car and happy to oblige. After some nibbles of the crackers and a dose of Dramamine, she was back in her bunk and I put my earplugs back in for some real sleep. 

The next morning was pretty uneventful. Mackenzie was feeling better and I had a little more productive night’s sleep. 

The highlights:

• Lunch: ginger beef
• Dinner: prime rib
• Ellie nearly skunked me at cribbage! She managed two back-to-back hands of 24 points! I still think Carson was helping her cheat…
• Stopped to stretch our legs in Saskatoon and grabbed a cache just outside of the parking lot.

But here is where our day got interesting. Once we were all boarded and ready to go, they closed all the doors but the train wasn’t leaving. They went ahead and started serving lunch. (This wasn’t supposed to happen until we were moving again.) During lunch, the train finally departed and we were on our way again without any word on why we were delayed.

However, this advancement was short lived. As we made our way into Unity the train came to a stop and we were not sure what was going on. We took this opportunity to hang out in the Skyline car to read and maybe learn more about our delays. After sitting for a bit, we received word that a freight train had derailed not far in front of us! Details were coming in slowly, so we were not sure how long we would be stalled nor what our next move would be.

After about a half hour, the train left the station in Unity. But this again didn’t last very long before we came to a stop. Without any additional information, Ellie and I went back to our berth to take a nap and Mackenzie and Carson stayed behind in the Skyline car playing Zelda. After about another half hour, the train started moving again. Seeing as I was asleep, I am not sure how long we had been moving, but I woke up sometime later and saw that we were passing a freight train slowly. Ellie was still asleep and I went to the bathroom. When I came back our berth mate had just finished videoing the passing train. I made some comment about wondering what was going on and he informed me that the train we just passed was the derailed freight train. 

What we learned later is that a freight train (not sure what it was carrying) derailed in a section of the line with two parallel tracks. When the freight train derailed, it happened in the center of the train, so the front and rear portions were still on the tracks. Thankfully, it appeared like the engineers may have been bounced around a bit, but should have been able to walk away okay. Unfortunately, there were several mangled cars and the tracks were torn out of place. It’s going to take some time and work to repair that stretch. However, the other parallel track did not appear damaged and the derailed cars fell away from the second set of tracks, leaving them in operation. Because of this, the RTC (Rail Traffic Control) allowed our lighter passenger train to traverse this section at a slow speed; I’m not sure if they were allowing other heavier freight through. Very scary all in all, but also very fortunate as it could have been a lot worse!

We ended our day tucking the girls into bed and heading up to the top of the Skyline car to catch the setting sun. Editor’s note: We had a longer scheduled stop in Edmonton, but we were getting in so late due to the delay that we both decided to stay on the train.

Thursday, June 15, 2023. Our first night sleeping on the train was a bit rocky (pun fully intended here). As we were planning this trip, we read in multiple places how the rocking of the train would lull us to sleep. Well, WHOWEE! There is nothing about the rocking, jostling, bouncing, rattling, squeaking, shaking of a train that could be mistaken for lull! The girls seemed to have slept pretty okay; Carson struggled a bit; I slept in 45 minute increments with 10 minute breaks in between naps, giving up in the morning to a stiff-all-over body. I’m gonna need to figure out a different sleeping strategy for night number two!

Despite our exhaustion, the day must go on… Breakfast was just as good as dinner last night. Then, we proceeded spending our day bouncing between the upper and lower decks of the Skyline car improving our Cribbage skills, playing other various games, reading in our berths, and eating the best food that Via Rail had to offer.

The highlights:

• Lunch: tuna melt, burger, and chicken strips
• Dinner: pork loin, chicken florentine, mac & cheese, PBJ sandwich
• We’re all getting better at Cribbage but Carson is threatening to teach us all Spades
• Inadvertently ended up in a chair yoga/stretching activity in the Skyline car
• Attended a beer tasting in the upper level over looking the tree tops
• Won Canada trivia against some Canadians. This came down to a double tie breaker question about which 4 Canadian provinces produce wine. Yes, we got all four of them; the Canadians only knew three. 🙂
• All 4 of us got off the train in Souix Lookout, Ontario to stretch our legs and found a geocache in a bush by the parking lot.

We capped off our evening by tucking the girls into bed just as we pulled into Winnipeg. Here we were allowed to leave the train station for a bit to walk around outside while new passengers boarded and got settled and they changed crews. Since we had access to Wi-Fi in the station, Carson was able to add books the girls’ Kindle and update the time on all of our watches. And, with the last 10 minutes of freedom, Carson found a couple of geocaches just outside the station. 

Once back onboard, Carson took the iPad and the Switch to the Skyline to wind down. Meanwhile, I popped in some ear plugs and settled on my bed to read and attempt my second night on the train. Wish me luck!

Tuesday, June 13, 2023. This morning started off much slower than the previous few mornings. We were able to sit down for a bowl of cereal in the apartment and the girls got to catch up a bit on their morning TV shows. 

With our walking shoes on, we headed out to enjoy the morning on a walk over to the CN Tower. We managed to snag the opening time slot up to the cheeseburger (main observation) level and promptly got to enjoy a full panorama of Toronto. Then, at 9:40 we made our scheduled way up even higher to the macaron (skypod) level of the tower. Yes, we have cheesy nicknames, but what do you expect from Wisconsinites? After a little bit of hesitation, we all managed to settle in and enjoy an even wider view of the city. 

Once we made it back down to ground level, we continued our morning walk to the pier to catch the ferry out to the Toronto Islands. 20 minutes later we disembarked and headed for the bike rentals on the far side. As an alternative to walking around the islands, we opted for a 4-seater quadricycle. Despite 4 sets of pedals and 4 peoples worth of leg power, this thing was quite a bit of work. And in true Monroe fashion, we pedaled our way around the islands hunting geocaches 🙂

As we wound our way around, Carson would hop off the quad and take a girl with him down the random paths to find an adventure lab answer, then hop back on and we’d venture off to find the next one! After a couple of quick finds, we happened across a busy cafe and stopped for a lunch of breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs, fries, and hummus. Then, back onto the quad for a few more caches. Unfortunately, (or maybe thankfully?) quads were not allowed across any bridges. So, the girls and I took the quad over to a playground while Carson ventured across a forbidden bridge for a couple more caches. When we tired of the playground, the girls and I headed decided to just pedal around to kill some time. However, as we were passing the forbidden bridge, Mackenzie spotted Carson on the other side and decided that she wanted to help him hunt out the elusive Tupperwares while Ellie and I hung back goofing off with the quad. About 20 minutes later, Mackenzie and Carson emerged successful but potentially tromped through poison ivy. Fun.

With the gang back together again, we decided to call it a day and return the quad, then head back to the mainland. But not before we found a couple more caches (or maybe they were Adventure Labs? Or maybe Where-I-Go’s? Shoot, I can’t tell the difference!) As we stood out on the far edge of the fishing pier, we noticed the wind start to pick up and the dark clouds start to move in. Since we had absolutely no desire to relive yesterday’s misery, we started our walk back across the island to the ferry. Thankfully, we managed to dodge the rain and make it back to the mainland dry.

Finally back ashore, and I apologize if I’m repeating myself, we continued our walk, managing to find a couple more geocaches along the way. One stop in particular required us to count brass fish in the sidewalk in front of the Toronto Harbour Commission. After several attempts by all members of our family, we finally settled on 41, or maybe 37, or maybe it was 40? After enough time coming up with various totals, an employee took pity on us and asked if we wanted him to tell us the correct total? YES, Please!? For anyone interested, there are 41 brass fish in the sidewalk. 

From there, we headed straight back to the apartment for some well deserved time off our feet. So, up 32 floors and through the door that requires a legit key thingy, we mercifully found a sofa just waiting for us to sit on it! By now, I was ready to order a couple of pizzas for delivery and get the girls through showers, then off to bed. But a quick time check and we learned it was only 4:00!  Just a wee bit too early for dinner and bed… So, the girls turned on Croods 2: A New Age and Carson went back out for a couple more caches, while I pretended to read my book while dozing on the bed. 

Carson finally made it back, we ordered the pizza we were planning for, and finally got to make our way through showers and getting the girls off to bed. Unfortunately, Carson and I still needed to finish up the laundry that I had started earlier in the evening using a dryer that got plenty hot but didn’t really dry anything, as well as repack all of our bags in preparation for the start of the next leg of our journey in the morning: the TRAIN!

Prologue: When we first started planning for this day about a week ago, the forecast predicted sunny and 70s. So, we bought our tickets for Niagara Falls and planned out our activities accordingly (including go-karts and indoor putt-putt). The following day, the forecast shifted to rain and low 60s. Mother Nature sure was having the last laugh…

Monday, June 12, 2023 As forecasted, we woke up to steady rain showers. So we packed a bag with extra clothes to change into if needed because we knew we were going to get soaked. Then, we loaded into the car and headed for Niagara Falls. But first we needed breakfast!

Carson heard about Montreal-style bagels on one of his podcasts a while ago and decided that we needed to try some while we were in Canada. Except we never planned to go to Montreal. So he did his research and found a place on the way to Niagara that is known for being pretty close to true Montreal style in Toronto, Kettleman’s Bagels. We ordered ahead in anticipation of eating on the road and tried to add some padding to the pickup time to account for traffic. Then we had a 10-minute slowdown due to a new accident, which turned out to be a dump truck that had jumped over the center divider on a 6-lane divided highway. Despite that, we made it to the restaurant just after pickup time and made the decision to slow down the morning a bit and ate inside instead.

This was a good decision. We picked up our bag and found a table near the counter and watched them work. They make all of their bagels by hand, cooking them in a wood burning oven and using an 8 foot-ish wood turner to shift the bagels around in the oven. The girls each had your basic bagel fare (cinnamon raisin bagel, one with cream cheese and jam and the other with blueberry cream cheese). Meanwhile Carson had a salmon-with-other-stuff bagel and I had a breakfast bagel sandwich. I don’t know that I would say these bagels are worth going out of your way for but they were very tasty.

Back on the road, we finally made it to Niagara Falls, ON, and parked at the top of Clifton Hill. We all put on our rain coats, I grabbed the backpack, and we started down the hill to the cruise meeting point. We were all pretty wet by the time we found where we needed to be but in the spirit of the activity, we all put on the ponchos they were passing out and climbed aboard the boat that would take us into the mist of the falls. 

We tried to prepare the girls for the amount of wet that they would experience on this outing, but I don’t think they believed us! By the time the boat left the dock our pants were already sticking to our legs due to the rain and my coat sleeves had soaked through (I was the only one without a true raincoat 🙁). We quickly rode past the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls and started our approach to Horseshoe Falls. And here is where the misery really kicked up a notch!

As anticipated (at least by the adults in our party) the mist started to come across hard and the wind really started to whip around. As hard as we tried, we could not hold our hoods up tight nor keep our ponchos from billowing to provide any amount of protection from the onslaught of horizontal moisture blowing on us. But really, at this point in our morning, we were doomed to be soaked through regardless. 

After what seemed like an eternity to some small members of our family, the boat finally turned around and headed back to the dock. There we disembarked and proceeded to make our way back up the hill. Only this time, we made the trek soaked through to our socks and attempted two geocaches on the way. 

The first geocache required us to find information from a plaque that apparently no longer exists. So we took a picture as proof that we were there. The second geocache involved walking across a green space that was waterlogged. So, Carson and Ellie went for it while I hung back and tried to help Mackenzie see the fun in being soaked to the bone on a cold day (I don’t think I really made much progress…) Carson and Ellie returned with a success and we continued up the hill to find lunch.

After some back and forth, we spotted a Rainforest Cafe and decided that this might be the ticket to cheer up our group, and maybe give us a chance to dry out. So we stepped inside and started pealing off our wet layers of ponchos (yes we were still wearing them) and jackets. We were promptly seated across from a group of gorillas that periodically serenaded us with whoops, bellows, and tree swinging. After lunch, we headed back out to make the best of what was left of our day. 

Something that I didn’t mention previously, Clifton Hill is pretty much a cross between Branson, MO and the midway at an amusement park. This place was also full of tourist groups and kids on school field trips. So despite the crummy weather, this place was pretty busy. 

Back to the story.

At this point, the rain had mostly let up and we continued up the hill to enjoy a round of indoor black light wizard putt-putt. We were given our putters and each picked out a neon ball and then head downstairs to the first hole. Given the weather outside, there was no surprise that this activity was busy. Impressively through, despite the entire place being back to back groups of golfers, play moved along pretty steadily. The atmosphere was pretty interesting. It was definitely on the darker side as it was only lit by black light, making it easy to see your ball but hard to see the head of your putter. Never the less, we didn’t keep score for the girls but Carson and I duked it out with him beating my by only 4 strokes; so not too bad. And, as we emerged back into the regular light, we noticed that the rain had finally stopped.

As we were contemplating our next move, the girls asked to do a mirror maze. We bought the tickets and after a couple of tries we finally find the correct mirror maze that our tickets were for (yes, there’s more than one mirror maze at this place!) Talk about a trippy experience! I’m not sure how long it took us, but we managed to find ourselves back at the start of the maze twice before we finally managed our way through the entire maze to the exit. Once out, we attempted to head for the car, but we weren’t able to make it past the ice cream. So we found a not-too-wet bench to sit and eat it that just happens to be directly in front of the giant ferris wheel. And of course, now we just have to go for a ride. As a nice bonus, the weather had finally cleared up enough that we were finally able to see the falls in all their glory!

Back at the bottom, we finally made our way to the car to start our trek back to Toronto. 

Ho ho! Not so quick! We still have a couple more caches to find on the way. The first of these was down a secret trail at the end of a winding road. I’m not real sure that we were supposed to park where we were, so Carson and the girls went after the cache while I waited in the car. After a few minutes, they returned with a successful find and several bug bites. (Glad I stayed behind for this one!)

The second cache was a different kind of adventure. The GPS attempted to take us down a road with a big chain link do not enter fence across it. So we tried going down a little further and ended up pulling into a driveway for another super secret something with tall fences and gated entrance. Google maps says it was a General Motor plant but I think it looked more fortified like Area 51 or something. Anyhoo, we called it a wash on this one and finally made our way back into Toronto.

Editor’s Note: We stopped for one more old cache, but the only exciting thing about it was that it was nearly 20 years old!

We had one more stop to make before calling it a night: dinner. Carson found us a very convenient parking lot and we walked over to small restaurant called Wilbur Mexicana. Maybe we were just really hungry, but these tacos and my salad were super tasty! I would highly recommend this place if you happen to be in the area. 🙂

We finally made it back to the apartment, got showered, and went off to bed. I think we were all asleep before our heads hit the pillow.

Saturday, June 10, 2023. After days of packing, weeks of prepping, months of planning, and years of anticipating, the day finally came for us to head to CANADA! For the first time ever, the cats were dropped off at the boarding place, the house was clean, and we were ready to leave on time! So we moved the bags to the driveway and waited for our cab. 5 minutes… 10… 15 minutes went by and still no cab. Carson finally broke down and called the company to get their ETA. Welp, it would appear that our vehicle was stuck in traffic out at the American Family Championship Golf Tournament in town and would be another 20ish minutes before they could get to us. So it looked like we would get to drive ourselves to the airport. First crisis of the trip averted! 

We eventually made it to the airport, checked our bags, cleared security, and still had time for breakfast (muffins) while we waited for boarding. 

We connected through Detroit and into Toronto without any issues. 

Customs was eerily efficient but no passport stamps for any of us. 🙁 Apparently they don’t do that any more? 

We picked up our luggage from the carousel, snagged a Ford Edge from National, and headed across town. We pulled up to the apartment building we booked and Carson dropped me off so I could run inside to figure out how to get into our unit. Welp, according to the not-very-happy security guard on duty, we were supposed to have received an email with all of the details regarding how to access the apartment and garage. So, back to the car, and sure enough, Carson found the email with a very detailed scavenger hunt for how to find the fob for accessing the building and garage (Hint: it was in a lockbox connected to the bike rack at the Tim Hortons across the street from the apartment building. A real life letterbox!). We used the fob to enter the underground garage where we begin scavenger hunt #2: a search for our assigned parking spot. Two u-turns and two additional garage doors later, we located our stall.  

Using the fob again, we gained super (not-so-secret) access to floor 32 of our round apartment building. Then, using an old-timey thing called a key, we unlocked the door and finally made it to our destination.

After the proverbial claiming of beds, we hauled back downstairs to try dinner at the restaurant in the adjacent building. We quickly learned that there was a 40 minute wait. So we added our names to the list, and went across the street to let the girls play while we tried to figure out a possible plan b for dinner. 

Plan b turned into dinner from a place called Bobo Bento Box. 

We took it to-go and ate it up in the apartment. The girls had the orange chicken, Carson had beef in a Chinese black pepper sauce, and I had chicken in teriyaki sauce. Very yummy! 

As we wrapped up our arrival in Toronto and started to settle in, the girls rotated through showers and into bed for some well deserved sleeps!

The first couple of days of this trip we spent escaping Seattle; today, we spent exploring it.

For the first time since we landed, we were able to sleep in a little and take our morning at our own pace. The first item on our agenda for the day didn’t start until 10, so the girls finally got to watch a little TV while we rotated through morning showers and cereal for breakfast. By 9:30, we had our backpack loaded up and were headed out the door. This time, we hopped in the car and headed just a couple of miles north to Groundspeak, also known as Geocaching Headquarters (HQ).

Our tour of the facility really only included a sneak peek of their lobby. Although I was hoping for more, it did not disappoint. In that small space, they had various trackables to log, a photo booth, a phone booth cache, a trackable that has been to the ISS, and other good stuff. The coolest part of this tour was that it completed our Geocaching Trifecta (APE, Original Stash Tribute, and HQ).

From there, we spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon roaming around that neighborhood completing the HQ GeoTour (GT29) and a few other caches. At the point when the girls were getting pretty fed up with caching, we called it a day and headed over to the Woodland Park Zoo.

…And that’s where the post ends because we didn’t finish it last year.