And so we began Day 44- where we spent the morning with Dave and he gave us a tour of his garage. We had a good time scoping out his classic car and checking out his decked out garage space. Afterwards it was time for us to hit the road again- so we gave him our deepest thanks for the wonderful experience and wished him the best until next time we met. 😊
We spent the day driving through Minnesota, and that night entered Wisconsin where we found a comfy rest stop to stay at for the night. We had been debating if we wanted to go visit the Mound Caves the next day, so we decided to watch the video that the park provided about them. As we watched it, the unenthusiastic demeanor of the speakers just bled over the whole video. It was seriously bored, blank staring people 😐 just stating that they couldn’t believe that something amazing was in Wisconsin! 🤣 I suppose it was safe to say we were “so moved by the uninspiring presentation” we decided to not make the trek to the caves the next day.
Day 45 came with a couple of goals along our travels:
Laura’s Goal: Find and consume beer and cheddar soup in Wisconsin! 😋
Geoff’s Goal: Dr. Evermore’s Sculpture Park! 🤓
After driving the morning across about half the state of Wisconsin- we rolled into a town to accomplish Laura’s goal. We stopped at a Beer & Bratwurst spot that advertised beer & cheddar soup. Not much later Laura was putting a lifelong dream from the rim of her soup spoon to the edge of her lips. Laura said overall it was a mild and good representation of Wisconsin as a whole; and though she was so glad to finally try it she would not need to pursue it again in her life. 😜
Not too far down the road was my goal for the day: Dr Evermore’s Sculpture Park! From my understanding it was a park full of crazy welded metal sculpted into bizarre steam-punkish art. And you know what…
…That’s exactly what it was! I could spend a whole lot of time trying to describe all the madness we so pleasantly got to view in here- but I’m going to let the slideshow pictures tell the tale on this one. There’s a lot going on here- so feel to hit the pause button on the slideshow if you want to explore any of the pictures longer than it shifts between them.
That afternoon we found a campground to dump at and we took a break from the road for a few minutes. Along the way we came across the cheapest gas we had seen yet!
While there I pulled the Lexel from the edge of the window trim I had patched, because it was failing to adhere to the Gaco, and replaced it with silicone. Since they were alike products this combination would bond together better. The front side window on the other side had developed the same problem from the crazy high winds we had driven through- so I gave it the same treatment as well. Down the road I would paint a few layers of Gaco over these areas to seal them up tight.
That evening we were further along our way, entering Illinois. After a confused and frantic lesson in Toll Roads, we found our way to a truck stop outside of Chicago. Here we voted to stay the night and brace ourselves for the drive through Chicago the next day.
Day 46 would be a long day of driving ahead. The drive through Chicago turned out to be about as crazy as expected; crawling and cruising between traffic jams, boxed in by walls of semi trucks, and plowing our way through a deluge of pouring rain.
After hours of this we emerged to escape the city of Chicago and we entered Indiana. We breezed through the corner of Indiana and were soon in the state of Michigan. There we paused for the cause and took a few minutes to breathe at their visitor center.
Refreshed and prepared to put on some more miles, we pushed our way through the majority of Michigan; where we found a Walmart for the night to rest up for the next day’s border crossing.
Day 47 was planned to be another big one- where we intended to enter Canada for the second time on our trip at the Blue Water Bridge.
There we crossed the steep and impressive bridge up to the border check gates. After the usual “nervous for no reason” moment of crossing the border into Canada, we were driving across the farmlands of its Eastern side.
By that evening we had made it to our goal: Niagara Falls in Ontario.
Now let me explain to all of you our expectations. We had expected a parking situation, similar to a state park, where you would park and have a nice, calm, and awe inspiring walk viewing the falls. What we came into was a completely different story.
The area where Niagra Falls is, Clifton Hill, turned out to be an amusement laden, Las Vegas-ish, commerce packed playground guarding the gates to the natural power of Niagara Falls. We barely were able to wander and find our way to pay a very steep fee, to land in a slightly precarious parking spot, to even begin entering the fray.
Here we entered the game itself; get to the falls. Navigating through streets filled with Ferris Wheels, rollercoasters, escape rooms, mazes, upside down houses, and anything else you could think of was distracting enough, but the people there was a whole other story! It turns out other places tend to have different traveling tactics in crowds. Where I come from, we would make a single file line to weave our way through a tight group of people; but not here. Here people would line up side by side and obliviously create a wall to walk through a crowd, blocking a whole path in the process. Also, inherently, the majority of humanity is trying to use their bodies at a minimum; so the speed of these said walls was but a meandering crawl. To double up on the wall factor- you had these situations going in both directions creating a very complex and uncompassionate maze to try and make one’s way through.
Alright- I’m done with my crowd rant! 🤐
So we made it to the falls- and they were impressive. Our timing was a double edged sword; having heard to arrive in the day you could see the Helios of rainbows from the sunlight upon the falls, we had showed up at night. The trade off was getting to experience the human touch on the falls. Bright LED lights showcased the falls, with tour boats lit up down at their base. After viewing the falls from afar- we wanted to get as close as possible. We wanted to feel the heavy blanket of mist fall upon us- so we headed closer to where they fell down from the Canada side.
After playing the crowd game again we made our way to our goal. The LEDs themselves created small rainbows of different colors in the cloud of spray coming up from so far down below. The immense power of the rivers current created somewhat of a vertigo effect before lunging its way over the precipice of the fall’s edge. Puddles of water surrounded our feet as we splashed our way through them; and then the popping began.
To top it all off a firework show began over the falls, so we enjoyed the spectacle of lights before deciding to head our way back for some food.
After we were fed and satisfied with our adventure in this insanity- we decided to try and find a calmer place to park for the night. Traveling to few recommended beaches we ran into an unexpected surprise.
Navigating our way down a small two lane road in the dark- another car came flying along in the opposite direction; riding the center line! 😲
They pulled away enough to not crash into us, but they clipped one of my mirrors as they zipped through the dark. I immediately pulled over, but they sped off into the night. We had officially been hit and ran on. 🤬
After making sure we could get to a landing spot without having to remove the mirror- we found our way to a pleasant little beach for the night. There I reviewed my dash cam video- and due to it being night; the cam could not pick up the license plate of the other vehicle past it’s headlights. 😧
I surveyed the damage to the mirror- seeing they had put a gash in the plastic back of it, as well as totaled the glass.
I would see what I could do to remedy things in the morning, but decided there was nothing more to do that night than let the adrenaline run out of our systems. So with that we put an end to another huge leg of our journey.
Geoff Murphy 7/26/2022