Day 29 - The River!

Well on this day we stayed in Leavenworth Washington and got there fairly early which gave us lots of time to go swimming in the rapids (and gain lots of bruises/cuts) from them which was totally worth it after seeing and swimming with all the large fish we found. It was pretty sweet with a couple small frights here and there like when my sister was whisked twenty or so meters down the river while she looked like a rag-doll bouncing off the rocks. We had fun and ate snacks as our final dinner with some pizza all together as well as got some awesome photos. The place looked exactly like the Okanogan which I miss so much so that was cool. Reminded me of old times on my Oma and Opa Spykers old place..

Day 28 - Yellowstone! HAWAT!?

We woke up early and had a pancake breakfast at the KOA that they supplied for a couple bucks which was totally awesome then we headed a little further into the town of Cody to check out the Buffalo Bill Historical something-rather that had five museums conected by one main lobby, we spent quite a few hours there but only saw three of the museums.

One of my favorite parts about the Yellowstone wildlife museum there was the comments box asking what they should do about the wolf problem (all killed off in the U.S. so brought in wild ones from Canada to live free in Yellowstone but still roam and damage farms etc.) in which I put a comment about creating them a colony on Mars or something random and stupid like that so that it would go up on the wall with the rest of the comments :P

Yellowstone itself was too spectacular to properly describe or capture through photos...So I took a video :P Still cant upload videos though unfortunatly so you will have to ask me about that one, its of Old Faithful (the awesome Geyser that goes off ever hour and a half) going off in front of us. So we had ice cream and explored some thirty or so geysers under the sweltering sun as well as cursed and swore numerous times after rushing back to meet up with others and seeing a massive unpredictable one go off that we had passed maybe ten minutes or less before for a good solid five minutes or longer with people only metres away, on the boardwalk where we were >:|

So those were all really cool but what was better was when we drove out of there and drove past two bison on the side of the road I could/would have reached out and touched if they werent so dangerous. Then also turning the corner to see a Grizzly Bear digging up ant hills to later turn through a field to see a number of Elk as well as another field full of nearly if not more then one hundred wild mule deer. A number of which were really close to our R.V.

Too bad we couldnt find any place to stay in Yellowstone though, we ended up having to drive a number of hours when we left there at 7:30 searching numerous campsites to no avail due to no vacancy and slept in a Wal-Mart superstore parking lot :| Its a strange sensation going into a Wal-Mart after twleve at night and at seven in the morning to brush your teeth. You sure do get some odd looks :S

Day 27 - KOA/New BFFs

So on this day we got up and brought my cousin next door to the hospital (we were fortunate) and got her check out cause she couldnt walk on her knee that completely swelled the day before so we got here crutches and heard it had something to do with the ligiments in her knee.

We drove a long ways on this day as well I do believe with a quick stop at a notable rest stop that had a replica of the Lewis and Clark expedition boat with some other cool info on it there.

Then we went to stay at my favourite campground yet, finally a KOA!!! And the pool was awesome and everything was awesome, and I met some really cool people...that eventually led to some talk behind my back among the convoy and my new nickname as proclaimed by my Uncle that leads me to roll my eyes everytime. The nickname itself you would have to ask me in person because then I would have to explain the whole story to you in which I would prefer not to tell a number of the ten people following this and whoever else they wish to share it with >.>

Should start keeping track of names <.< Ive already forgotten most of them

*Patrick Morris (Cool poor guy who claimed he could sence lighting)

*Will? (Guy from Niagra Transit :P )

*Two girls who thought I was a Tom...(LMAO)]

*Chealsea
*Ricky (Cousins)

*Cameron
*Sheridon (Siblings of C and R)

There is a story to be told behind every one of these names btw if you wish to know.

Day 26 - R-R-Roadkill Cafe

So on this day we drove a long ways and had some trouble finding a campground like we normally do considering how late we normally start to consider looking for one and ended up in another cheap little (well looked cheap) campground called the Crazy Woman or something, which the desk lady was >.>

One thing to note is the couple THOUSAND bikers we saw this day and are still seeing three days later and a couple hundred miles away. They were all going to the yearly Sturgis bikers rally there and I have a funny photo of my Opa in his bright orange shirt making small talk with some Hells Angels that my Aunt took LMAO. But wow there were some pretty cool guys but we also saw a number of sketchy Mexican bike mobsters and american equivilents alike.

There was a nice pool at this place that I forgot to mention but the storm prevented us from being able to swim there.

Day 25 - Super Storm

So lets see if I can remember back this far....Hrm. Dont remember where I got up and cant tell from the ending of my last post, but I believe this may have been the 12 hour drive day...
Anyways we ended up at an open campground (like the $3 but $15 instead) where you can camp anywhere and there is no office....and there were some sketchy people there. Like DIRT poor, so much so that they looked like they lived there which they were until they can afford to move on to the next stop on their way to Alaska from where they started in Kentucky.

Upon arriving there were storms coming from three directions and the place was the scariest campground ive ever been to not including the residents, so naturally I put my creative mind to work and made a horror film with my cousin :P Would post it but my computer doesnt like the format so maybe another time...

Anywho that night the storm hit us from all sides and there was almost no rain but lighting stricking 6 feet from the R.V. and I was freaking out walking to the washrooms and between campers like no tomorrow....which there may not have been for me had I been struck. :S
Video and photos of me and my cousins trying to summon lighting you will have to ask me around my laptop sometime to see....but you would have to remember to ask me cause I wont volunteer to show you them considering how hilarious and foolish we look :P

Day 24 - Trek Home Day 2 (The Lighthouse Premium Outlets)

Although there was no American Eagle there were another hundred and twenty stores the majority of which were clothing stores to chose from. We went nuts. It was fun, got some cool stuff. I now have plans to clean out my room and the majority of my old clothes within a week of arriving home. Since then we have been driving non-stop for a number of hours, longer then most of the other days because of our recent travel back in time. Where will we sleep tonight? I don’t know. But I pray they have internet.

CONT. And we don’t. Perfect. Well then you guys can wait another day or two. We covered seven hundred kilometres today by the way even though we spent a number of hours at the mall. I also get to get up an hour later tomorrow due to our time travel which is rad.

*Forgot to mention that the mall was next to what could very well have been a nuclear power plant with the massive smoke stack that was fairly short but super wide.

Day 23 -Trek Home Day 1

We finally headed out for home with two stops along the way in mind but not after going to my Aunts parents house on Frogs Hollow Side Road (had to mention the road name, I wish I lived on a street with that cool a name) where we had awesome sandwiches and learnt about their cool cat named Ivan that was more like a dog then a cat. This is where we also said our goodbyes to my Uncle and Aunt/cousins who had left us before the reunion then joined back up with us from there because they were staying another week or so. Then we headed out late (at eleven) for the days journey that lead us across the border to Flint where we swam and spent the night. I think the mini-lake we swam in there is worth mentioning. It was more or less a giant pond and was maybe the size of the panorama pool and had a dark blue/green nasty color that kept you from being able to see a foot in front of you under water as well as a small (in comparison to the pond) circle that constantly bubbled that my Uncle had made a joke about being where the sewage pumps in. I almost believed it too, that’s how gross this water looked at first glance, but after asking someone about it and taking a better look at the shade of the water it looked more of a blue color and smelled like a number of the pools we had swam in previously I learned that the water was like it was because of the chemicals they put in to keep it clean and to prevent algae from growing while the bubbles and swirls were aerators (or something like that) which kept the water moving giving it currents and such to prevent it from becoming static.

Day 22 - Tobermory and THE GROTTO

THIS was definitely one of the high lights of my trip! It was radical (I use awesome and cool/neat too much >.> ….I need a thesaurus… so I am going to replace those words with radical from now on I just decided). So first we drove two hours in two very crammed vehicles to Tobermory where we looked in shops, bought some clothes and ate all you can eat fish and chips. Then as the day grew on we headed to the coolest natural wonder in Ontario as far as I’m concerned. We hiked a kilometre in and arrived at this cool cove where super smooth white rocks and freezing water with eroded rock formations all around us. After some swimming and cliff jumping (which is definitely not illegal and where there where definitely not signs saying not to >.>) we climbed over a large formation into The Grotto. Too bad I didn’t get a full picture of the grotto itself but if not up right away come back to this post to see some from inside where you could jump ten feet into the deep water. Or dive into the glowing blue light six feet below and follow a tunnel twenty five feet to come up on the other side of the formation. It seemed like a stupid thing at first and I wouldn’t have done it a year ago but it’s a lot easier to bring yourself to do something like that when you don’t let fear and common-sense hold you back. So I swam through the tunnel with my Uncles with some goggles (its close to impossible without them) holding my breath for a good amount of time and it was especially rad. You follow the light through the rock and come up on the other side to swim back around to do it again but I only did it once after having my goggles fill almost immediately after jumping in the first time and freaking myself out big time. So pretty much I did a number of things that could have gotten me killed and loved every minute of it (don’t worry mom my uncles were there to make sure I didn’t do something tooo stupid, like what they were doing >.> well no but I wouldn’t have gone backwards through the tunnel if I where them). There was also a seventy foot tunnel but you need fins if you want to even bother attempting and the people we heard from who had done it said they started regretting it about three quarters of the way through.

When we finally hiked out of there it was almost seven or so (we left at eight or so that morning for Tobermory) and we raced back towards the campsite to see if we could make the eight o’clock showing of Harry Potter Six but missed it and got Sundays at dairy queen instead. Then we went back to the camp and reminisced before heading to bed.

Song Of The Day

The Ghetto (But replace all the times they say Ghetto with Grotto and you've got what my Uncles were singing all day lol)

By: Elvis

Lyrics :

Day 21 - Sauble Beach

I guess I should begin by apologizing. It took this long to get another one out there because I happen to be a very busy boy. Although we had internet on the day this post should have gone up (four or so days ago) I was two hours away from the campground for close to twelve hours. And those twelve hours were AwEsOmE. We went to my Aunt and Uncles favourite beach, its called Sauble Beach on lake Huron and although the scenery doesn’t compare to the one with the dunes on lake Michigan the water is super clear, warm (once you get used to it) and the sand is perfect with no rocks visible…at all…anywhere. It was so awesome that we were there all day and have classy matching sunburns to prove it. The sand was so great that me and my Uncle were eventually lead to build “Sand Art” and sand Inuk shucks LOL which then turned into writing messages in the sand; my uncles expressing his love for his wife and me to two people that I never got to properly thank for their awesome birthday present.

So after buying a floatie or two and spending the entire day there, we stopped by The Patch Clothing store (like the one we have in Victoria but cooler) and headed back to the campsite.

That night I went on a six kilometre bike ride on a quest for milk that I feel the need to mention. That’s all.