On Vacation!!!

Blogger is back! YEAH! (Instead of starting from a couple of days ago, I am going to do today's post and then work backwards to update you all. I will schedule the older posts for the days that they were supposed to be. So, if you want to read the past couple of days, you will have to click on "older post." ) We woke up this morning in Richfield, Ohio and headed north to Cleveland to visit the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The Museum of Natural History is right next door to the Art Museum and there was a "globe" exhibition throughout the area where various artists created worlds to bring awareness for various issues. This one features "unplugged" play. I forget exactly how much power Americans use for "play"in a year, but the number was unreal! Dane was super excited to get to the dinosaur exhibit!  He really enjoyed all of the animal exhibits and small dioramas. They also had a great discovery zone play area where Dane and I had ...

Here is the map of our drive today. It was supposed to take us about 3.5 hrs. However, there was A LOT of construction in the state of Pennsylvania. (We were literally crawling at 10 mph for quite some time). We found a great hotel in Richfield, Ohio. It had an atrium with a HUGE area for play! There was mini putt putt golf, a "big kids" play place, a little kids play place, a pool, a wading pool, and hot tub. There were also all kinds of arcade games, a pool table, and ping pong tables. It was a great place to have a restful evening at the hotel!

This is the video I thought I shared from the Maid of the Mist. Apparently, I uploaded the wrong one! Enjoy ;).

We took a mid day break, to download our photos and make some activity decisions for the rest of the day. Our full post for the day will come later.... BUT... we just wanted all of you to know that we fed and touched beluga whales today!!!!

We have a new hotel! BONUS- It has power, it has air conditioning, AND wireless internet that works in your room! AND, get this..... we were able to get all of that with the very first room they assigned us! How cool is that. That my friends, is a story for another day. Needless to say, the first hotel we were booked at had a few issues. We are now comfortable and cozy at a nice relaxing hotel.... and our van is back up and running. Life is good :). We started our day off with a little bit of shopping. The place we stopped had some great props for photo ops! Then, we went across the Aero Cable Car over the "whirlpool" we looked at yesterday! It was an amazing view, but a "little scary" being up so high above the water. After our appointment to get the van up and running. (We ended up with a pair of new tires being that the flat was not fixable, and they recommended replacing 2 rather than just the one....) We headed back down to the falls. There is JUST SO ...

We made it to Niagara Falls. Today has been an adventure. We started off our morning in Port Huron... We made sure to stop at the beach to dip our toes into Lake Huron before loading up and entering Canada!  Driving over the bridge..... CANADA! It has been quite an eventful day. We ended up with a flat tire on our way to Niagara Falls. I think we were about 30 kilometers away.  Thank goodness we were equipped with a spare!  Our hotel experience has been quite interesting as well. We are on our third room..... Third time is a charm? I certainly hope so! I'm actually sitting in the lobby typing this up though because the wireless is not working in the room. (At least there is power in this one... and air conditioning....) We were supposed to stay here three nights, but we are now checking out first thing in the morning.  We really didn't let the bumps in the road stop us from having a great day though! We had dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe.  We saw the "whirlpo...