Ultimate Road Trip

Last night we arrived at our campground near Washington, PA. We rented a cabin for a couple days. We needed a place to stay until the Penguins game tomorrow night. The cabin is quite cozy and the people here seem friendly. Last night we watched the game on a big screen TV with the owners from the campground. They are pretty cool. The guy comes from Sudbury and the girl from Thunder Bay. He told us a bunch of hockey stories from when he was young. Today we’re taking it easy and tomorrow we get to watch the Penguins play the Flyers.

Darcey

The other day when we went to Wal-Mart, Danny and I noticed that they had some really good deals on food. We bought a massive sandwich for $5. We split it and couldn’t finish it for lunch. The left over’s served as a bedtime snack that night. We also bought $5 of lunch meat that will last us for a good 4 lunches. To my surprise, the Wal-Mart had cookies that my mom use to buy when we were kids that I can no longer find in Canada. I was more pumped than Paul (my oldre bro) with his new snowblower and a foot of snow. The cookies were awesome. They were so awesome that my head would explode if I even began to blog about how awesome they were!
Anyways, the food was cheap and the junk food even cheaper. A normal price for a chocolate bar was 50 cents. Maybe that would help explain the high percentage of obese people in the States. Thank you Wal-Mart for helping us save money on our trip.
Oh yeah and today i bought a towel for $1.50. Not bad!

Darcey

 

  Although there were no trolls we still had to pay ridiculous tolls. It seems as if we had to pay for every highway we drove on between Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. When we first stopped at a toll booth, there wasn’t anyone there to take our money. There was a sign indicating that we had to drop $1.50 into the basket coin counter and then there would be a green light indicating that we can drive off. We didn’t have enough American coins and Canadian coins didn’t work so we took off with the light still being red. As we left, the high-tech cameras took a picture of our license plate. I feel like such a rebel! I hope they don’t find us. When we got to the second toll both, we drove through it barely slowing down. The next day, I thought we were done with the toll booths. But no, they were all over the place and this time with gates. We couldn’t be rebels anymore and skip-out on not paying. Luckily for us, this time there were people working at the toll booths. We were able to pay with bills. Our tolls ranged from $10.50 to $0.15. I almost started laughing at the girl when she told me I owed 15 cents. I find it funny how they back-up the traffic by making cars stop in order to collect 15 cents. All these unexpected expenses are really hurting our budget. Not really, but Mom if you’re reading this post you should probably send us some cash incase we have more tolls to pay on our way home or incase we decide to pick up a few cases of beer at the duty free shop. P.S. Hopefully we run into Toll Booth Willy or at least get the opportunity to see a troll.

Darcey

    
Today Darce and I started off our day with a superstart breakfast.  The superstart breakfast sounds pretty bad ass but it’s only a continental breakfast at the Super 8 motel hahaha.  We checked out at 11 a.m. and needed something to do until the game which only started at 6 p.m.  We ended up going to Wal-Mart to get tooth paste and some groceries. For the past couple days we have been dry brushing our teeth (without toothpaste). After that we went to watch the movie 21 at the theatre.  It was a good movie and it gave us something to do on this rainy afternoon. 
  We then headed to Chicago for the Blackhawks game.  They faced off versus the Columbus Blue Jackets at 6pm.  The game was really intense.  We had a good view and we were sitting right in front of the announcers for the Blue Jackets.  It was kind of like having the announcers of the TV and watching it real life. Chicago were losing 3-1 and then came back to tie the game. The game went to overtime and then to shoot out. We were pumped. We never saw a shoot out in person.  Chicago came out on top and won the game.  All in all it was really intense and a fun time. The drive to and from the game went a lot better then we expected. We thought it would be ridiculously busy, but I guess since it was Sunday and raining it wasn’t that bad.  Tomorrow morning we are driving 7 hours east through Indiana, Ohio and ending up in Pennsylvania. The next game is in Pittsburgh and should be another really good one.

 
The Xcel Energy Center is the arena in St Paul where we watched Minnesota Wild vs Vancouver Canucks.  Minnesota played really good and Vancouver played poorly.  The end result of the game was Vancouver losing 4-0.  It was still fun to be there even though Vancouver lost. The arena is fairly new and the nicest one I saw so far. We had seats in the upper section and the view was awesome. I was really impressed.  Would have been more impressed if Vancouver would have won, but it’s all good. We had lots of fun

    
After snacking down our continental breakfast, Darce and I headed to St Paul Minnesota.   St Paul is really nice. We spent a lot of time visiting it today.  We went to the Science Museum of Minnesota which was pretty cool.  It had a lot of exhibits but it also had tons of kids. We walked around town and even got to see the Mississippi River.  The Mississippi River is super long and I didn’t even know it passed in Minnesota.  It was cool to see the exhibits at the museum about the river.  The weather was nice and all in all it was a good afternoon killing time for the hockey game

Last night we slept at a Super 8 in St-Cloud, Minnesota. With the tax, our room cost us 72$. That includes a free continental breakfast and free jus whenever you want. Danny was all over the free jus. He filled up his water bottle twice! Today he wants to fill up a 4L jug so we can bring it with us in the truck. Not sure if he will do it. Our continental breakfast was good. We had French toast and snagged some doughnuts for today’s drive. We’re a couple hours away from St-Paul, Minnesota where we will watch the Minnesota Wild play the Vancouver Canucks. Hopefully the Canucks will win! 

Darcey

Yesterday we said goodbye to Canada and hello to the States. It took us a while at the border. They made us get out of the truck, asked us questions and searched the truck. It took at least a half an hour. They didn’t find my half empty bottle of vodka I had brought with me from whistler and didn’t make us toss out the beef Jerky. So… not bad! We drove through North Dakota and part of Minnesota. There wasn’t much interesting things to see on our way here unless you love prairies and fields field with nothing. We did see a Budweiser factory, a Kraft factory, many U.S. flags and a sign advertising a K.F.C buffet. Ah! A K.F.C buffet! That would be so gross. All you can eat K.F.C. Only in the states you’ll see that. They probably have an ambulance ready in the parking lot.

Darcey

For the first time on our road trip, I got pulled over by the cops. About 1 minute away from the Saskatchewan border I looked into my mirror to see a cop cruiser with its lights on. I should have sped up to cross the border and lose the cops but I wasn’t doing anything wrong. After a small conversation with the cops about Hockey games, Whistler and Twin Tips skis, he told me that there’s a few things wrong with my truck. The first being that I didn’t have any mud flaps and the second being that the trailer hitch on my truck is obstructing my license plate. The fine in Alberta for not having mud flaps is $115. He let me go because I’m from Ontario and suggested that I stop at a Canadian Tire, invest 20$ and get some mud flaps. Maybe I’ll consider it when I get back home. Is there such a law in Ontario? Anyways, he never mentioned the trailer hitch and that was it.
Darcey