We decided that we were going to press on after our border fill-up until we reached our first rest stop where we would pull over for a picnic. I can't remember how far we actually drove, but it was far enough that everybody passed out. The rest stop set the bar pretty high for other rest stops (oh, did we enjoy pointing out the nasty ones!): nice park setting, clean tables, shade, washrooms, a lawn for kicking a ball around…perfect. Except for the dead bird I suppose. We hit the road fully refreshed and drove around Lansing to a little place called Charlotte where we reached the 1,000km mark and celebrated with sundaes all around. We had the opportunity to drive past Kalamazoo (awesome) and then started our cross-country count of Prolife Across America's ubiquitous billboards (somewhat awesome, I guess). People started getting peckish as we rounded Lake Michigan and crossed into Indiana so we stopped in a suburb of Gary for some Panera goodness. In the end, Indiana and Michigan ended up being two of the three states we passed through but did not overnight: we still felt that we could legitimately claim to have visited those states by at least having a meal in each one. We arrived at the hotel a little late - somewhere in the neighbourhood of 8 p.m. - but we finally got to do what we had been selling the kids on for months: swim in a hotel pool. We splashed around for a good hour before finally calling it a night. Holly and I were starting to feel pretty good about our prospects on the trip now that the boys had successfully survived a good long day on the road without any real situations!
Before moving on, here are pictures of a Pickle truck boasting billions of shipped pickles (as it turns out, Michigan is a hotbed of pickle production), of our picnic at the rest stop and of Max "I'm never tired" Stardom passed out in the van.
The next morning, Max and I got up early and went down for some continental breakfast. Most of the breakfasts over the course of our trip were fairly forgettable. This one was memorable for two reasons. 1) They served biscuits and gravy and it turns out that Max is a big fan. 2) The news was on and I didn't notice that Max was paying very close attention to a story about a woman who had gotten drunk and used her underage son as a DD. After the onslaught of questions ("What's drunk?" "Why was she arrested?" "So you mean that part of that was a good choice? Why?"), I got my hands on the remote and found PBS kids. I remembered very quickly why I reprogrammed our TV at home to not air channels with news programs. "What's drunk". Ugh.
We eventually left the hotel and set out to have a fun activity day. We drove across Chicago to Schaumberg to visit the Legoland Discovery Centre. The kids loved seeing the massive Lego exhibits, going on some rides, seeing a 3-D movie, clambering on a play structure and participating in building challenges. Definitely a worthwhile stop. Somehow, despite the fact that this Lego stopover is only worth a few lines of text, it was certainly worth a lot of pictures. Here are some excerpts:
We left Legoland a bit later than expected, but we figured we could make up some time and get to somewhere in the neighbourhood of Minneapolis. Unfortunately, construction all the way through to the Wisconsin border really slowed things down (although my four passengers got in a sweet nap). We decided it was about time to pull over for some dinner at Wisconsin Dells so we took the exit and . . . OMG . . . everyone's eyes got wide and jaws dropped. First there were highway, farms and forest and then there were billboards, water parks, buildings built to look like they were upside-down and general Niagaraness. The back seat fell silent really quickly. We pulled over at a pizza joint and put in our order. While we waited, Holly came up with the idea of just staying put for the night rather than trying to push forward toward Minnesota. The weather was good enough to get in some slides, it was still June so the crowds weren't ridiculous and Hotels.com had a pretty sweet deal on one place. So we had our first trip improvisation and spent the night at The Polynesian.
Oh, The Polynesian. What a place that was. The water park was a little run down, although apparently it was one of the first places (if not the first) to conjure up the idea of an indoor water park. Henry loved the splash pad area and Max was all over both the slides and the lazy river. Leo hung out a bit in the splash pad but loved the hot tub…until he got kicked out for being too young. Oh well. We spent the first night playing around in the water and then passed out in the room. We woke up to a torrential downpour that flooded part of the hotel and then we heard screaming in the hallway. Holly ran out to see what was going on and ended up participating in trying to resuscitate someone who had had a cardiac event. Fire trucks and ambulances arrived on scene pretty shortly, but it didn't look good for the stranger down the hall. People were cleared out of the room and Holly the hero returned to her family for another morning swim. It turns out that the torrential downpour was not the worst of the storm. Thankfully, we were north of the tornadoes that allegedly touched down somewhere around Madison. Overall, it was kind of a B-list place to stay, but it really hit the spot. Everyone had a great time and Max even asked "What's the name of this reserve? (his word for "resort") I want to make sure I take my kids here when I grow up." Sigh.
Before moving on from The Polynesian, here are some pictures.
Our last exhausting driving day started out heading across the last stretch of Wisconsin. We made it all the way to Menomonie (billboards for mile were informing us that Menomonie ranked 15th on Smithsonian Magazine's list of "The 20 Best Small Towns in America" in 2012. Thanks, billboards.) before we decided to pull over for some food. We hit up a Culver's for some awesome burgers and sundaes for dessert before finding a park and playground to burn off some energy. We hit the road again and eventually made it to Minneapolis (by then it was obvious it would have been a real trial to get that far the night before) and fluked into taking the north part of the ring road around the city while some major accident happened on the south branch. We didn't even pause (despite Holly finding a complex with thrift stores, a Super Target and a Nordstroms outlet in it. She actually considered having me drive back and pick her up the next day:) ) as we continued across the state. The 70 mph limit and the complete absence of troopers made it easy: we blew through St. Cloud and Sauk Center before rolling into Alexandria for dinner and some playtime on a lawn outside the local Subway. The kids ate poorly and were a bit of an emotional mess by the time we got back in the van so we finally decided to pull out the heavy artillery. We knew we wanted to roll into Winnipeg as early as possible the next day, which probably meant hitting a hotel in Grand Forks, still 300 km away. So we busted out the iPad and put on some cartoons for the kids. We tried to hold out as long as possible, but to make up for the late night, we figured it would be a good move. The kids got to watch Backyardigans for about an hour and then they passed out. Now it was just a matter of getting to a hotel…
When we got into Fargo, Holly started punching up Hotels.com. There was a Howard Johnson in Grand Forks that looked like it would be a good place to stay. I think it came in at about $75USD for a night but had a breakfast and a water slide/pool so we could get the kids' day off to a good start in the morning. Then Holly decided to shop around a bit more (we had been using Hotels.com by default as they had a bit of a loyalty program going on…little did they know that our loyalty could be bought!) and found another hotel on Hotwire (chain unknown) that also advertised a breakfast and pool for $49USD. We really wanted the place with the water slide but couldn't say no to the price. We booked it and Hotwire revealed to us that we would be staying at the….HOWARD JOHNSON. Hotels.com, you can go now. All told, we covered 852 km that day and we only left the Dells around noon. Well done, boys. Well done.
In the morning, Max remarked at breakfast that the hotel lounge played country music videos and had a dart board so Nana would "definitely like this place". He might have been right. I think there was a TJ Maxx nearby too. Henry, Max and Holly hit the pool while Leo and I watched Sesame Street and packed the room. The rest of the morning was pretty uneventful. We stopped off in Pembina to enjoy our last tank of cheap gas before crossing back into Canada for a visit with Grandma, Uncle Murray, Auntie Kathy and cousin Hannah in Winnipeg. Leg 2: COMPLETE! +2,148 EXP. Level up.
Here is a last batch of pictures:
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