Finale

The end of the vacation blog posting is near. And there's a little bit of knitting in it since this is a knitting blog after all.

(on and by the way, Laurie commented on yesterday's post that Caitie (10) is catching up to Molly (8). That would be because Caitie finally talked me into buying her shoes with heels. Take a look, you can see them. She's still quite a bit shorter :)

There was lots of camp stuff.
Rob and Caitie decided they had to make a bridge/dam across this stream. It was a big production.

Look how small it is here.

And now much wider it is here.
Ontario Place was a hit.
This is the blue slide, the top of which is supposed to provide a view of the nude beach on the Island. Caitie and I couldn't really see anything.

Caitie got to be in charge of her first campfire. It was a good one.
One of my favorite things about where we were was Teepee Steve.

He's a native who lives for the summer at this site right next to where we were at Glen Rouge, and does outreach education for kids. Several groups of kids came and went while we were there and when we were around they let our kids join in.

Steve took down one of his teepees and let our kids put it back up.
There were also groups of natives camping nearby who entertained us at night with really cool drumming and singing.

The fat ballsy racoons came back several times, but they didn't get anything else after the bacon.

In addition to the skirt I worked on around the campfire, I also knit the second of this pair of socks (Plymouth Sockotta, cotton blend, LOVE these)

and the first one of these (Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Blackwatch).

I also did a bit of work on a silk/bamboo blend tank that I am in love with but pretty much did not take out of the car because I did not want to hurt the pretty yarn.
So on the last day we drove from Toronto to Niagara Falls. And dude, Niagara Falls is cool.

I've been there before, but not in many years. It does not get old.

Ignore the hair. It's impossible to be near that much mist and not have huge insane hair. There are several pictures of me and this is the only one where my hair isn't sticking straight out to the sides like Pippi Longstocking.

This picture is from the Cave of the Winds, a tunnel where you can stand underneath the falls, which is a little... disturbing. And cool, at the same time.
There's also a tunnel that comes out next to the falls. It's a lot cooler than this. I was insanely paranoid about getting my camera wet. You just can't believe how much mist there is.

Here's the American falls from the Canadian side. Caitie thought that it would be a lot more dangerous to go over that side because of all the rocks.

Yeah. That would be why.

Do you see all the little yellow dots off to the right by the little skinny branch (called Bridal Veil) of the falls ? That is the Cave of the Winds, which I thought was the coolest thing there when I was there 25 years ago (oh man was it really 25?).
I still think it's the coolest thing.

We crossed over back to the states in the evening because we wanted to see the falls at night.

(Incidentally, it's really *really* hard to take pictures of moving water with lights on it in the dark. Being worried about your very expensive camera getting wet does not help.)

If you go up to the top level ("Hurricane Deck") you get ridiculously wet and blown around. I do not have any pictures of anyone doing that because, it's ridiculously wet.
This is the rocks Caitie was talking about, where I dropped my camera lens while trying desperately not to get the camera wet by keeping it in a plastic bag.
Totally worth it though.

We left Niagara falls for home around 10, planning on driving an hour or 2 to a hotel outside of tourist central and saving ourselves a little cash.

Unfortunately the only hotel we saw for several hours was $100, which we were sure we could beat, so we went on. When we got to Pennsylvania (just a little corner of it), we stopped again, but there were no rooms. We stopped at a second and third place, still no rooms. Someone told us there was something called the Roar on the Shore in Erie.

So ok, we drove on to Ohio. STILL no rooms. What the heck? We never did find out what was going on, but there were NO rooms anywhere. We had a AAA book and called dozens of hotels, all of them were full. We finally gave up at about 3 am and decided to drive straight through. Cause the kids were asleep the whole time and they were going to be up at 7am whether we stopped or not.

We stopped and slept for an hour or something or other at a truck stop before moving on. Who the heck knows when you're that tired. It sucked so bad. And I didn't get *any* knitting done in the car on the way home. Not one stitch.

We got home around 9 am as tired as I think I have ever been. It was worth it cause the trip rocked, but if I could have skipped the overnight driving, it woulda been better.