3,115.7 miles in 7 days...

[channelmaniac]

Whew!

What a trip. It was time for David & I to go on our 2nd annual father/son road trip. I let him pick the destination and he chose Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. We left on Saturday and came back today - 7 days of driving.

I'll post pics up later... We stopped a quite a few places along the way, including the Mall of America, the aquarium in Duluth, Split Rock Lighthouse, and a quick detour to the grandparents in Columbia, Missouri.

The only downsides? A ticket in Kansas... $OUCH$ and a 6" (approx.) screwdriver tip in the rear passenger tire.

That part of Canada is AMAZINGLY beautiful and we found some cabins with a superb view to rent next summer. ($100 a night, sleeps 6, and has a great view of Lake Superior!)

Anyway... I'm beat. Time to eat dinner and relax.

[Nails]

Wow! 440 miles a day hardly sounds relaxing. Surprised you had time for any sight seeing at all. Look forward to the pics.

[CosmosMpower]

Yikes, good thing you didn't take a SUV! Sounds like a good trip, some parts of Canada are very scenic and the weather is nice.

[channelmaniac]

We went to a LOT of places and met up with a couple of folks from other online forums I'm on.

Split Rock Lighthouse was great - the scenery driving up 61 from Duluth to Thunder Bay was incredible. The drive was prettier than driving up north of the Golden Gate Bridge on Hwy 1. You are following around the coastline of Lake Superior.

We went bass fishing on stock tanks and found a set of beautiful cabins for $100 a night. That will be where we stay the next time we go up! There's a cheese farm near there too. You can watch them make the cheese, get free samples, then buy a bunch. $19cdn for a 1kg wheel of gouda.

The people were incredibly nice in Canada. It was shocking at how nice they were.

At the aquarium in Duluth you can watch them feed the river otters and there is a big setup of the lakes where the kids can play with boats. Push the button and you make it 'rain' in the upper lakes area which feeds water down to the other lakes. There are even manual locks to move the boats between the lakes as they are on different elevations. It was cool and David had a blast playing there.

One of his favorite places was a restaurant in Minneapolis we ate at. It was one of those 'fusion' places that had Latino and Oriental foods. We had a damn good Cuban pork dish for dinner followed by a fun dessert. They sat a dish on the table that had a flame in the middle. It was stocked with very thin homemade sweet cookies, chocolate and caramel sauces, and marshmallows on sticks. Basically a do-it-yourself smores platter.

I would've never known about that restaurant or the theater building that offered the scenic view of the river area if it weren't for meeting up with one of the moderators over on the neo-geo.com forums. We got a great tour of the city's highlights.

RJ