Welcome back to the final leg of our Great Lakes tour of 2018!
It has been such a blast to share these great vacation memories with everyone but I do have a disclaimer to add to this trip, and I probably should have included it in the other two posts as well. I may have cast Maria in a less than agreeable light during this trip. However, there was a good reason for it, even though at that time I only had slight suspicions. Maria was about two months pregnant with Giovanni at this time and was not feeling well at all, but was also trying to not let on about her "condition". So, with hindsight, I understand her crankiness. A side note to that disclaimer is that Ben is not mad in all of the pictures, he just tries intentionally to not smile in any picture. But no matter what, I still really enjoyed being able to take such a memorable trip with both of my youngest babies! So, lets wrap this trip up, shall we?
Day 5: We packed up and began heading south through Ontario towards Niagara. But first, we (Ok, I) really needed some coffee! No Starbucks to be found...so Tim Horton's it was. Let me just say, that experience confirmed our dislike of that particular chain. Sorry Timmy and sorry Canada. The coffee was *blech* and the donuts we got were waxy and greasy. But either way, we were on the road again.
Ontario is a beautiful place and it was neat to drive through another country with their KM per hour signs and all. A bit into the day's drive, before we started heading more inland, we decided to stop and get a glimpse of Lake Huron from the Canadian side. Again, the lake was beautiful! I totally get why these lakes are dubbed the "Great Lakes"!
We continued on the journey and began seeing some beautiful scenery along the way. If we had more time, I would have split that eight hour road trip up into a few days just so we could have taken more in.
No pictures were captured of our entrance into the greater Toronto area but it was pretty breathtaking and spectacular. I was in awe of the sheer size of that city...and grateful our route did not take us further into it as traffic was indeed a bear! We arrived at Niagara, Ontario, found our hotel, got some food, and crashed for the night.
Day 6: Time to visit the falls! I am someone who probably suffers from a little bit of FOMO when I am traveling so first I wanted to see the falls from the New York side. So, across the border to the US yet again. The falls were beautiful from that angle but we didn't stay too long because I was itching to get even closer to the water.
Back on the Canadian side, we did a tour of the Great Falls portals. So, essentially, there are these tunnels behind the main fall, the Horseshoe Fall, and they give you a little glimpse from behind the falls. It was super cool and super loud to hear the water crashing onto the rocks. It was also a bit...damp.
The next stop, though, was the most exciting one! So, for anyone who is not aware of this, Ben has never really been an adventurous child. He sat out for roller coasters and stuck to the wave pools instead of the water slides. So, when we headed to board the Hornblower tour boat (this is the Canadian side's version of the Maid of the Mist), he very adamantly refused to go. I was torn between leaving him by himself and missing out on the ride of a lifetime...but he insisted Maria and I go without him. We didn't argue!
Getting up close and personal with these majestic falls was the most amazing experience! I cannot even begin to explain how powerful this was. Of course, the best part was experiencing it with two of my favorite people! Fun fact: while we were checking out the falls, Ben saw someone he recognized and realized it was Pokimane from Twitch. He got to meet her in-person! She was live-streaming and got him a little cameo too, which helped to make up for his mommy and sister ditching him for a boat ride (lol).
But enough about the falls - this is called the Great Lakes Tour after all - and we still had two more lakes to visit. The next one to check off the list was the one I was most excited about (well, after Lake Superior, for reasons already covered in Part 2). We were going to seek out the one Great Lake that I had never seen: Lake Ontario!
Just like so many things in my life, this little mini-trip came with its own adventure. I will admit that I was not expecting to leave the city of Niagara Falls and be almost immediately in a rural setting, but that is what happened. We were in the middle of nowhere and low on gas. We pulled up the GPS and found the closest gas station to us and headed towards it, weaving through corn fields and dirt roads until we reached our destination: an old house in the middle of a field with no gas pumps anywhere in sight. Okay, cool. Except, well, the car was already screaming at me and now she was telling me that we had 1 mile left of gas. The next closest gas station was about 3 miles away. And we were in the middle of nowhere in Canada. Perfect.
Fortunately, we were able to make it all the way to the gas station without having to pull out the thumb (for you whipper-snappers, that's what people did back in the day to hitch a ride). We also found ourselves in a cute little town on the shores of, you guessed it, Lake Ontario! We snapped a few pics and then headed back to Niagara Falls and our last night on vacation.
Did you guys see that last picture, by the way? That is a very rare sighting of Ben's smile! He loves us, he really does!
Once we got back to Niagara Falls proper, we took on the nightlife in a family-oriented kind of way. We had dinner at Rainforest Cafe and then we walked through some of the touristy places. We rode on the Niagara Skywheel and then made it back to the hotel to rest before our journey home in the morning.
Day 7: The final day of the Great Lakes Tour...but wait! We've only seen four of the five lakes. How can we possibly go home yet? Well, Lake Erie is actually on our way home. So, we crossed back over the border one last time into New York and headed west. Since I have seen Lake Erie from Ohio and I was trying to see each lake from a different perspective, I decided to take a gander at the last Great Lake from the perspective of Pennsylvania.
So there you have it, my friends! All five Great Lakes in the matter of a week. That trip is still one of my all-time favorites and I will cherish those memories forever. As I write this post today, it has been over five years since we've gone on that adventure but it seems just like yesterday.
And for anyone wondering just how I rank the Great Lakes, here is the official list from least favorite to most favorite:
5- Lake Erie
4- Lake Ontario
3- Lake Huron
2- Lake Michigan
1- Lake Superior
How do YOU rank the Great Lakes?
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