Tales From the Minivan

Well our day got off to a later start than anticipated. I wanted to get up at 4am, finish loading the van and leave around 4:30am. This way we’d beat the Toronto rush hour traffic on the 400 and the 401 highways. Finn had a really rough night and around 2:15 am woke and was inconsolable. He wouldn’t nurse, I tried walking with him, finally I tried bouncing him, this seemed to work until her threw up everywhere! Finally I tried putting him in his car seat and rocked him back to sleep. He finally fell asleep at 3:10am, my alarm was set for 4:00am! Needless to say I hit the snooze button a few times.

We finally got on the road around 6:30am and the traffic was not bad at all, we hit Toronto around 7:30am and had no trouble navigating through the city at all, we hit the US Border in Lewiston NY at around 8:45am. This is where the gridlock started. What a disorganized border crossing!! We spent almost an hour and a half in this mess! It started with 2 truck lines and 2 car lines that merged back into one, but no one was letting anyone from the second line in! Then they opened up another car lane on the bridge so everyone was jumping the line from the back. Once we finally reached the wickets, there was now 6 windows open but for some reason 7 lines of cars! Remind me to never cross here again! I hope that this is not a regular occurrence.

Once we got into New York State we drove as far as Tonawanda, and the kids just needed to stretch. We were hoping to find a Play Place, but after driving around settled on a regular MacDonald’s we got into the restaurant and got the kids changed and went to order our food. It was just a couple of minutes before 10:30am and they had hardly any breakfast items left. Apparently their breakfast ends at 10:30am! Who wants lunch food at 10:30 am? Not many people as everyone that came in after us also asked for breakfast!

We got back on the road again and I drove for a few more hours then needed a break Andrew took over driving and we got some Pokemon playing for the kids while I took a well needed nap. This was somewhere between Syracuse and Binghamton, NY. Just outside of Binghamton, we hit gridlock again right around the Pennsylvania border. Construction, it was needless gridlock though, if they had proper signage, people would have known that a lane was coming to an end. Instead people lined up in both lanes not knowing which one was ending then trying to merge in at the last minute and no one letting you! Very frustrating!

The rest of the drive was pretty straight forward, our directions from Google Maps were perfect and took us right to the resort in Bushkill, PA in the Pocono Mountains. It was a really beautiful drive down through the mountains. Looks like we have some exploring to do here at the resort and it’s a very large property. Our condo, isn’t quite as nice as our last one (it’s very outdated, very 80’s) but still a great alternative to staying in a hotel.