multiple trips

On Wednesday, July 4, we (Mike, Katie, another leader from our church John, and I) decided to take a trip into Michigan to celebrate Independence Day on the American side of the St. Clair River. We thought it would be so cool to have our passports stamped on July 4, but were disappointed that the border guard flat refused to, claiming it doesn't get stamped for land crossings. The Canadian officer said the same thing, even though I know that's a lie, since I have several stamps from Canadian land borders, the most recent from a few weeks ago...

At the end of the awesome week, Katie, Mike and I decided to take the scenic route home through southern Ontario, Niagara Falls and the Adirondacks. We saw a lot of beautiful, peaceful things. Between Walpole Island and Niagara, if you take a more southern route (we took Route 3 pretty much straight across) you'll find lots of farmland, some wind turbines, apparently some vineyards (I slept through that part), more agriculture...

Peaceful.

Niagara Falls was cool. I'd been there once before with Jamie, Amanda and Katie, but having Katie with a very, very broken foot, it was difficult to explore. This time, Mike, Katie and I were able to wander all along the river. I was absolutely mesmerized by the upper river, watching all of that water pouring over the edge and noticing what little weeds had managed to root themselves and grow along the edge.

After a good dinner at a pub and some wandering around, we decided to take our tired selves back into the US for a good night's sleep in New York, at a place to be determined once Mike had domestic service for his magical smart phone. Well, we made it into New York, and then while Mike was looking down at his phone and Katie was focusing on not getting car sick and I was driving on I-190 North... right back into Ontario. There was no way to turn around before the border check, so I hung my head and told the guard how embarrassed I was to go the wrong way. Well, it's also New York's fault for not putting any sort of LAST EXIT IN THE US sign before the last exit.

So we spent another night in Canada, in Niagara Falls, before returning to the United States to search for moose in the Adirondacks. No such luck spotting any, but we did find a lot of beautiful lakes, the gorgeous Roosevelt-Marcy trail, and some great trees.

Of course, the fact that Katie and I had our passports scanned into and out of Canada four times in the month of July had me a little nervous heading back through customs at the end of JACK's recent Maritime madness, but we clearly sailed through without a problem.

Exhausting, but a very good adventure through multiple mission trips and many new places.

Welcome to Canada, it's the maple leaf state!

Today was the big day! It seemed a bit surreal as I was driving to the grocery store at 7AM to pick up a few last minute things. My mom kindly drove us to pick up the car, and we were on our way. It was an easy drive through NJ, PA and NY, only to met with our first big adventure: getting through customs at Niagara Falls. While the person in the booth checked out our passports, she asked questions like, where we were from, where we were going, where we worked... and how we knew each other, since all of those answers varied a bit. The response? "From church." Apparently that's not a good answered, because we were asked to pull over into customs and have the entire car searched... down to the photos on my camera (I hope the officer enjoyed the few shots of us picking up the car this morning). Amanda actually had to go into customs to surrender the pepper spray her mom sent along... oops. The officers recommended bear spray though, which is legal in Canada, and stronger. Interesting.

We went down to the falls just to get a sneak peak and have dinner. Pretty sweet, can't wait to see them during the day! But we're back at the hostel now, getting ready for bed and enjoying the sweet thunderstorm.

http://s276.photobucket.com/albums/kk14/JackCanada/day%201/

And, to all of my friend people back in Virginia reading this, you will see in photos that our very, very sweet 2008 Chevy Impala has VA license plates!