Niagara Trip - Day 4 - Don't need a map I have a GPS

Today we left the campground and headed for Canada.  Before leaving Monroe MI, we had to check out the very first NUCCA office since that’s the kind of chiropractic that Kyrie practices.  That was in downtown Monroe and that was when we started having trouble with our GPS.  Before the trip I decided not to bring the road atlas because it wasn’t very useful and I figured I would just be using the GPS the whole time anyway.  The GPS started locking up and then it would work for a while if I unplugged and started it again.  Now it won’t work at all and it’s making the driving much more difficult. 

I suppose it's the very first NUCCA office since it's the office of the man who developed the technique, I just never thought of it like that before.  It's a quaint little building behind a house that Dr. Ralph Gregory once lived in.  We pulled up the closest corner, I hopped out of the RV and snapped a quick picture before we moved on.  I just felt like I should at least get a glimpse of the office while we were so close.  Currently 2 NUCCA doctors who were mentored by Dr. Gregory are still practicing there.  Nice piece of history that is particulary important to me, since NUCCA saved my life.

The Canadian border patrol stumped me with the “what’s your license plate number” question (since we’ve only had it for a few weeks), but other than that we managed to invade Canada without much resistance.   We did inadvertantly smuggle in some lunchmeat and cheese.  The drive through southern Ontario didn’t have much to look at.  It was mostly corn fields and some trees.  It reminded me a lot of driving through Wisconsin.  The big difference is that there aren’t any billboards in Canada, well, at least not that we’ve seen.  I could see from the exit signs that there were some places that we could have stopped at along the way that might have been sort of interesting, but without billboards to entice me, I just could never decide if any of the stops were worth it.  Plus I never had more than 1 or 2 kilometers to decide!  The kids were getting really tired of driving by the time we reached Hamilton, Ontario so we exited and looked for a place to get out of the RV for a bit.  We saw a park right on the lake (Hudson?), but there wasn’t anyplace nearby to park so we kept going and eventually settled for a WalMart to walk around and pick up a couple things that we needed.  That worked out okay, but our stop definitely dragged on for too long since we were less than an hour from Niagara Falls. 

Finally, we reached our destination and made it to the Embassy Suites where we will be parking our RV and sleeping in real beds for the next two nights – yeah!  When we checked in at the hotel, they offered us an upgrade to one of their presidential suites for $80/night extra.  We decided to go ahead and splurge since they described it so nicely and since we have no idea how much $80 is in this funny Canadian money!  I think it’s about $75 USD, but who knows?  Anyway, since Canada doesn’t have a president, they apparently don’t have much of a concept of what a presidential suite should be like.  The room is nice, but I would hardly call it a presidential suite.  It has a bedroom and then a sitting area with a pull out couch.  Both areas have a great view of the falls, but the suite that we originally booked would have also.  I think the whirlpool tub and the fireplace is also part of the upgrade, but I think I still would have been just as happy with the other room.  What we really needed was an elevator pass – the elevators are so crowded all the time. 

We had dinner at Tony Roma’s which was fine and then Kyrie and Jacob headed back to the room while the rest of us ended up taking a long walk to the falls.  Looking out of the hotel window it appeared that getting to the falls would be very easy since it is right there, but getting down there with a stroller required walking many blocks north before I could get to a road that would take us down to the falls area.  Eventually we made it and had a good time along the way.  By the time we got back Zoe was sleeping and we were all ready for bed.