Traveling Toward Retirement

Today is Christmas Day and we started the morning at home with presents and homemade cinnamon rolls courtesy of Emily. After gift opening Em and Jacob took off for his family festivities and Katie, Todd, and I watched Candy Cane Lane on Amazon Prime. It was cute - lots of puns!  After eating leftovers and playing a competitive game of Catan, our Christmas gift from Jedi, we started packing and taking out the trash since we’ll be gone for the next ten days.  I took a quick nap to try and rid myself of a two day migraine I’ve been experiencing…of the joys of being a woman! We loaded up the van and drove up to Grams to drop off the dog for her own vacation with the one who spoils her.  We drove two hours to SFO and on the drive I realized that instead of having my car sit in airport parking for the next week, perhaps I could get some much needed car maintenance completed by dropping it off at Uncle Joe’s shop. One drop of the keys and an Uber drive later, and we were spendin...

Today we saw beauty. Absolute stunning beauty. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First we started with breakfast at the AirBnB and then drove over to Brad and Rachel’s to meet up for the day. You’ve probably heard of the finger lakes but maybe you didn’t know where they were (like we didn’t). Ithaca! There are eleven lakes and many waterfalls. Actually, they have a pretty cute motto here: Isn’t that a cute play on words? We made sandwiches and packed a picnic before heading out for a few hikes and lots of waterfalls.  This was one gorge that we saw from the top, then drove to the lower trail and hiked in a mile to see it up close. We also passed by some smaller falls along the way. The best thing about this hike was that it was flat with no elevation change. The path was dirt but wide enough for multiple people to walk side by side. It was also completely shaded under the cover of trees. Worth it! We picnicked and at Taughannock State Park where the marina and the swimmers kept us ...

Today we said a sad goodbye to my sister and her crew. They set off on their 11 hour drive and we set off on our 3 hour drive to Ithaca. We drove over a few bridges and saw two of the finger lakes. You’ve heard of those right? Us too, but we’ve never been. Until today!  We are visiting Ithaca because Papa John’s son lives here with his wife and daughter. We set our map on their house and after passing through a ton of small towns, many corn fields, and a few mini marts, just over three hours later we arrived.  They delighted us with a lovely lunch spread of sandwiches and lemonade before we set our sights on a moderately difficult hike to see some of the famous waterfalls that this region is known for.  We set our maps to Treman State Park and hiked to see Lucifer Falls. This park was amazing! We have all been to Hawaii and many of us thought the greenery was comparable. It was lush and green and fern covered. It was gorgeous.  We also got to catch up with Brad and R...

We made pancakes this morning. Sadly I forgot to buy bacon at Costco so we had to make due without. We rolled out around 9am today since we read online that the lines can get longer later in the day. We were so glad to make it our early because we got close parking, cheaper parking, and we didn’t wait in line at all for the boat.  We ventured on the Maid of the Mist which is the boat from the New York side of Niagara Falls. So we had to cross the border this morning and Rainbow bridge. It’s probably called that because there is always mist from the falls and therefore there is a rainbow in the sky probably all the time. Pretty cute, huh? Here we are before the ponchos and the wet experience! They give you these full body ponchos to wear plus a hood. Those hoods did prove challenging to keep on with the wind, but the thought was there! Today is a beautiful sunny day so the sun was shining and the mist was appreciated. But then the mist got stronger, and the wind kicked up. The force...

Today we jetted out of Toronto and made it to Niagara Falls in one hour flat. I wasn’t speeding, just going 100…km :) We are still in the land of metrics where gas is only $1.52… a liter :) Around 11am we got to the Botanical Gardens and met up with my sister from North Carolina. She drove 11 hours with four kids to visit with us for two days. This is the kind of effort that has to be put in when you literally live on opposite coasts.  Worth it! We roamed around the botanical garden and checked out some cool rose garden and veggie gardens. Those were super cool as the kids got to see cabbage, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, basil, and a bunch others.  We needed some grub so we found a burger place on the map that looked decent and possibly wouldn’t fill us up for our expected a Costco pizza dinner later. Well, we had no idea that we were driving to the main drag of a Vegas! Guys, we’ve never been here and in all of my research online for things to do, I did not see all of these t...

We headed out early today to be the first ones in the Casa Loma castle. It was built in 1911 and had some super cool features like an underground tunnel system that took you to the stables a few blocks away. There was an old car museum, a crazy huge wine cellar, a beautiful garden where a wedding was taking place, and even a wax museum at the top of one of the castle spires. Yes, a wax museum with current celebrities. Kinda weird but a cool addition to the tour!  The place was huge and built by rich guy Sir Henry Pellatt. This place had seven floors, secret hidden rooms behind panels in the walls, and staircases galore.  We had a lot of fun exploring the grounds and learning about all of the different movies that have been filmed here. We thought Uncle Joe would love all of the old cars we saw. After we felt like we had walked everywhere in this massive mansion, we sat the map to the nearest Cheesecake Factory to see how an international one compares to our locally loved locat...